Twitter Faster At Tracking Epidemics Than Health Officials

Social media is revolutionizing real-time, breaking news, allowing marketers frictionless interactions with customers, and connecting people across the globe. And now you can add one more notch to its belt: New research shows that Twitter is perhaps a better predictor of how an epidemic spreads than health officials.

Mashable reports that a study on a 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti found Twitter to be a faster transmitter of information than traditional health officials.

The study was published in the “American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene” and found that Twitter and other online forums published information about the outbreak up to two weeks before the official channels would release that same information.

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