Rainey Jeanette J, Kenney Jasmine, Wilburn Ben, Putman Ami, Zheteyeva Yenlik, O'Sullivan Megan
Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, United States of America.
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), Oak Ridge, TN, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Sep 21;11(9):e0163207. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0163207. eCollection 2016.
During an influenza pandemic, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may recommend school closures. These closures could have unintended consequences for students and their families. Publicly available social media could be analyzed to identify the consequences of an unplanned school closure.
As a proxy for an unplanned, pandemic-related school closure, we used the district-wide school closure due to the September 10-18, 2012 teachers' strike in Chicago, Illinois. We captured social media posts about the school closure using the Radian6 social media-monitoring platform. An online workforce from Amazon Mechanical Turk categorized each post into one of two groups. The first group included relevant posts that described the impact of the closure on students and their families. The second group included irrelevant posts that described the political aspects of the strike or topics unrelated to the school closure. All relevant posts were further categorized as expressing a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. We analyzed patterns of relevant posts and sentiment over time and compared our findings to household surveys conducted after other unplanned school closures.
We captured 4,546 social media posts about the district-wide school closure using our search criteria. Of these, 930 (20%) were categorized as relevant by the online workforce. Of the relevant posts, 619 (67%) expressed a negative sentiment, 51 (5%) expressed a positive sentiment, and 260 (28%) were neutral. The number of relevant posts, and especially those with a negative sentiment, peaked on day 1 of the strike. Negative sentiment expressed concerns about childcare, missed school lunches, and the lack of class time for students. This was consistent with findings from previously conducted household surveys.
Social media are publicly available and can readily provide information on the impact of an unplanned school closure on students and their families. Using social media to assess the impact of an unplanned school closure due to a public health event would be informative. An online workforce can effectively assist with the review process.
在流感大流行期间，美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）可能会建议关闭学校。这些关闭措施可能会给学生及其家庭带来意想不到的后果。可以对公开的社交媒体进行分析，以确定意外学校关闭的后果。
作为与大流行相关的意外学校关闭的替代情况，我们使用了2012年9月10日至18日伊利诺伊州芝加哥教师罢工导致的全学区学校关闭。我们使用Radian6社交媒体监测平台捕获了有关学校关闭的社交媒体帖子。来自亚马逊土耳其机器人的在线工作人员将每个帖子分类为两组之一。第一组包括描述关闭对学生及其家庭影响的相关帖子。第二组包括描述罢工政治方面或与学校关闭无关主题的无关帖子。所有相关帖子进一步分类为表达积极、消极或中性情绪。我们分析了相关帖子和情绪随时间的模式，并将我们的发现与其他意外学校关闭后进行的家庭调查结果进行了比较。
使用我们的搜索标准，我们捕获了4546条关于全学区学校关闭的社交媒体帖子。其中，930条（20%）被在线工作人员分类为相关。在相关帖子中，619条（67%）表达了负面情绪，51条（5%）表达了积极情绪，260条（28%）为中性。相关帖子的数量，尤其是那些带有负面情绪的帖子，在罢工的第1天达到峰值。负面情绪表达了对儿童保育、错过学校午餐以及学生缺乏上课时间的担忧。这与之前进行的家庭调查结果一致。
社交媒体是公开可用的，并且可以很容易地提供有关意外学校关闭对学生及其家庭影响的信息。使用社交媒体评估公共卫生事件导致的意外学校关闭的影响将是有益的。在线工作人员可以有效地协助审查过程。
