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• Social Networks as good tools for health information

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  Maryam Khazaie    Group moderator

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  Social Networks as good tools for health information

  A recent study out of John Hopkins University attempted to prove that sites such as Twitter may actually provide valuable public health information.
  
  Between May 2009 and October 2010 two computer scientists, Mark Dredze, a researcher at the university’s Human Language Technology Center, and Michael J. Paul, a doctoral student, studied 1.5 million health-related tweets. The researchers devised a categorization and filtering system that programmed their computers to disregard the words and phrases used in the billions of Twitter posts that do not relate to health.
  
  After filtering out the data, the researchers found useful information such as posters’ personal medical problems, perceptions on popular health topics, and common remedies. In addition to revealing public attitude toward health, researchers were able to use public information to map out which US state the information was coming from.
  
  • 09 Jul 2011, 06:55 am
  Maryam Khazaie wrote: > A recent study out of John Hopkins University attempted to prove that > sites such as Twitter may actually provide valuable public health > information. > > Between May 2009 and October 2010 two computer scientists, Mark > Dredze, a researcher at the university’s Human Language Technology > Center, and Michael J. Paul, a doctoral student, studied 1.5 million > health-related tweets. The researchers devised a categorization and > filtering system that programmed their computers to disregard the > words and phrases used in the billions of Twitter posts that do not > relate to health. > > After filtering out the data, the researchers found useful > information such as posters’ personal medical problems, perceptions > on popular health topics, and common remedies. In addition to > revealing public attitude toward health, researchers were able to use > public information to map out which US state the information was > coming from.