Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, RI, USA.
Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA.
Glob Public Health. 2020 Nov;15(11):1689-1701. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2020.1768275. Epub 2020 May 21.
During global health crises, different narratives regarding infectious disease epidemics circulate in traditional media (e.g. news agencies, television channels) and social media. Our study investigated the narratives related to sexual transmission of Zika virus that circulated on Twitter during a public health emergency and analyzed the relationship between information on Twitter and on traditional media. We examined 10,748 tweets posted during the peaks of Twitter activity between January and March 2016. Posts in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese and websites linked to tweets were manually reviewed and analyzed thematically. During the study period, there were three peaks of Twitter activity related to the sexual transmission of Zika. Most tweets in the first peak ( = 412) had humorous/sarcastic content (55%). Most tweets in the second and third peaks ( = 5,154 and = 5,182, respectively) disseminated information (>93%). Across languages, textual and visual content on the websites were predominantly placed online by traditional media and highlighted epidemiological narratives published by public health agencies, with little or no mention of the concerns or experiences of individuals most affected by Zika. Prioritising epidemiological/clinical aspects of epidemics may have a depoliticising effect and contribute to overlooking socio-economic determinants of the Zika epidemic and issues related to reproductive justice.
在全球卫生危机期间，传统媒体（如新闻机构、电视频道）和社交媒体上会传播有关传染病疫情的不同说法。我们的研究调查了在公共卫生紧急情况下在 Twitter 上传播的有关寨卡病毒性传播的说法，并分析了 Twitter 上和传统媒体上的信息之间的关系。我们研究了 2016 年 1 月至 3 月期间 Twitter 活动高峰期发布的 10748 条推文。手动审查并以主题方式分析了用英语、西班牙语、法语和葡萄牙语发布的帖子以及链接到推文的网站。在研究期间，Twitter 上有三个与寨卡病毒性传播相关的活动高峰。第一个高峰（ = 412）的大多数推文都具有幽默/讽刺内容（55％）。第二和第三个高峰（ = 5154 和 = 5182）的大多数推文都传播了信息（>93％）。无论语言如何，网站上的文本和视觉内容主要由传统媒体在线发布，并突出了公共卫生机构发布的流行病学叙述，几乎没有或根本没有提到受寨卡病毒影响最大的个人的关注或经验。优先考虑流行病的流行病学/临床方面可能具有去政治化的作用，并导致忽视寨卡流行的社会经济决定因素以及与生殖公正相关的问题。
