The arrival of the Zika virus in the United States caused much concern among the public because of its ease of transmission and serious consequences for pregnant women and their newborns. We conducted a text analysis to examine original tweets from the public and responses from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during a live Twitter chat hosted by the CDC. Both the public and the CDC expressed concern about the spread of Zika virus, but the public showed more concern about the consequences it had for women and babies, whereas the CDC focused more on symptoms and education.
Keywords: Health communication; Health messaging; Social media.
Copyright © 2016 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.