NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

In one week at the height of the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, in West Africa in 2014, Twitter users shared over four billion Ebola-related messages. This discovery is from results of a new study carried out by researchers from Columbia University School of Nursing in New York. In the study, researchers analysed Ebola-related tweets posted over a week in the early stages of the West African outbreak – from July 24th to August 1st 2014, said Twitter can play a useful role in outbreak monitoring and control.

Over 60 million people received tweets about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, The study, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, revealed that during the week in question, Nigeria reported its first case of Ebola virus disease, Sierra Leone declared a national state of emergency and the first American was diagnosed with the deadly disease.