Abstract
<p>Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its
millions of users to send and read each other's “tweets,” or
short, 140-character messages. The service has more than 190 million registered
users and processes about 55 million tweets per day. Useful information about
news and geopolitical events lies embedded in the Twitter stream, which
embodies, in the aggregate, Twitter users' perspectives and reactions to
current events. By virtue of sheer volume, content embedded in the Twitter
stream may be useful for tracking or even forecasting behavior if it can be
extracted in an efficient manner. In this study, we examine the use of
information embedded in the Twitter stream to (1) track rapidly-evolving public
sentiment with respect to H1N1 or swine flu, and (2) track and measure actual
disease activity. We also show that Twitter can be used as a measure of public
interest or concern about health-related events. Our results show that estimates
of influenza-like illness derived from Twitter chatter accurately track reported
disease levels.</p>
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