title: Mass Media and the Contagion of Fear: The Case of Ebola in America.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In the weeks following the first imported case of Ebola in the U. S. on September 29, 2014, coverage of the very limited outbreak dominated the news media, in a manner quite disproportionate to the actual threat to national public health; by the end of October, 2014, there were only four laboratory confirmed cases of Ebola in the entire nation. Public interest in these events was high, as reflected in the millions of Ebola-related Internet searches and tweets performed in the month following the first confirmed case. Use of trending Internet searches and tweets has been proposed in the past for real-time prediction of outbreaks (a field referred to as "digital epidemiology"), but accounting for the biases of public panic has been problematic. In the case of the limited U. S. Ebola outbreak, we know that the Ebola-related searches and tweets originating the U. S. during the outbreak were due only to public interest or panic, providing an unprecedented means to determine how these dynamics affect such data, and how news media may be driving these trends.
  
  
  METHODS
  We examine daily Ebola-related Internet search and Twitter data in the U. S. during the six week period ending Oct 31, 2014. TV news coverage data were obtained from the daily number of Ebola-related news videos appearing on two major news networks. We fit the parameters of a mathematical contagion model to the data to determine if the news coverage was a significant factor in the temporal patterns in Ebola-related Internet and Twitter data.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We find significant evidence of contagion, with each Ebola-related news video inspiring tens of thousands of Ebola-related tweets and Internet searches. Between 65% to 76% of the variance in all samples is described by the news media contagion model.
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Sherry
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Towers
authors.affiliation: Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Shehzad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Afzal
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Gilbert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bernal
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Nadya
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bliss
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Shala
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Baltazar
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Espinoza
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Jasmine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jackson
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Judson-Garcia
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mamada
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Victor M
authors.initials: VM
authors.lastname: Moreno
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Fereshteh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Nazari
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Kamaldeen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Okuneye
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Mary L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Ross
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rodriguez
authors.affiliation: Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Medlock
authors.affiliation: Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, U. S. A.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ebert
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U. S. A.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Castillo-Chavez
mesh_terms: D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D005239:Fear; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008402:Mass Media; D061108:Social Media