Framing the Use of Social Media Tools in Public Health

Abstract

The advent of social media tools creates new opportunities for public health surveillance that go beyond disease detection. We introduce a framework illuminating where the real value of social media may lie by characterizing different instances where public health officials can leverage their surveillance activities through social media. In this framework, we identify five categories of social media use: (1) a secondary data stream, (2) disseminating information, (3) monitoring communal responses to new information, (4) utilizing as an intervention and, (5) monitoring intervention responses.