{
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    "title" : "Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz, Oh What a Relief Social Media Is! |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz, Oh What a Relief Social Media Is!",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2014/07/17/plop-plop-fizz-fizz-oh-what-a-relief-social-media-is/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz, Oh What a Relief Social Media Is!","summary" : "We often think of social media as a way to expand our audience, but some public health departments are using it as a new tool for tracking outbreaks of salmonella, e. coli, and other foodborne illnesses. It’s a familiar story: A nice meal out results in days of gastrointestinal discomfort when you realize only too","date" : "2014-07-17T13:00:36-04:00","date_modified" : "2025-01-27T19:42:55-05:00","authors" : {"eden-savino" : "Eden Savino"},"topics" : {
        
            "open-source" : "Open source",
            "social-media" : "Social media"
            },"branch" : "bc-archive-content-3",
      "filename" :"2014-07-17-plop-plop-fizz-fizz-oh-what-a-relief-social-media-is.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2014/07/2014-07-17-plop-plop-fizz-fizz-oh-what-a-relief-social-media-is.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2014/07/2014-07-17-plop-plop-fizz-fizz-oh-what-a-relief-social-media-is.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2014/07/2014-07-17-plop-plop-fizz-fizz-oh-what-a-relief-social-media-is.md","slug" : "plop-plop-fizz-fizz-oh-what-a-relief-social-media-is","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2014/07/17/plop-plop-fizz-fizz-oh-what-a-relief-social-media-is/","content" :"\u003cdiv class=\"image image-right image-right-legacy\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/07/250-x-194-Pill-in-a-glass-ultramarine5-iStock-Thinkstock-153739583.jpg\"\n    alt=\"A pill fizzes in a glass\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWe often think of social media as a way to expand our audience, but some public health departments are using it as a new tool for tracking outbreaks of salmonella, e. coli, and other foodborne illnesses.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a familiar story: A nice meal out results in days of gastrointestinal discomfort when you realize only too late that the clams were a mistake. You may post to your facebook page and tag where you were, but chances are you never even send a \u003cimg src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/07/26-x-26-500-percent-green-vomit-sick-emoji.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"a sick, green emoji that vomits\"\u003e to your local public health department. Without that information, it’s hard to track the source and prevent problems from spreading.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSocial media to the rescue! According to recent articles (\u003ca href=\"http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1885471\"\u003eJAMA\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/05/22/how-new-york-used-yelp-to-find-unreported-cases-of-food-poisoning/\"\u003eWaPo\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/dining/reviews-on-yelp-help-track-illness.html?_r=0\"\u003eNYTs\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2014/05/22/how-yelp-can-help-track-food-poisoning/\"\u003eABC\u003c/a\u003e, and others) two public health departments are now mining people’s online posts to help identify outbreaks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"a-tale-of-two-food-cities\"\u003eA Tale of Two (Food) Cities\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChicago and New York have been known to battle over the best pizzas and hotdogs, but now they’re battling to be on the cutting edge of tracking foodborne illness. \u003ca href=\"https://www.foodbornechicago.org/\"\u003eChicago\u003c/a\u003e was the first, monitoring Twitter for possible food poisoning references, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/dining/reviews-on-yelp-help-track-illness.html?_r=0\"\u003eNew York\u003c/a\u003e was close behind, scanning Yelp restaurant reviews for possible outbreaks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth cities use data mining software to search posts for words that could signal food poisoning, like “sick,” “vomit,” “diarrhea” and, of course, “food poisoning.” Staff then contact the post-ers to encourage them to file an official complaint.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"were-from-the-government-and-were-here-to-help\"\u003eWe’re from the Government and We’re Here to Help!\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis may hold promise for other initiatives. \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.org/flutrends/us/#US\"\u003eGoogle\u003c/a\u003e is using similar data mining techniques to help track the flu; Medicare has started using \u003ca href=\"http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-104\"\u003epredictive analytics\u003c/a\u003e to help identify potential fraud; and, in the future, instead of sending surveys, agencies may be able to gather real-time information on everything from opinions to pregnancies through such efforts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, this may take some finesse. Some Chicago tweeters were “caught off guard” by the outreach and, in New York, most people contacted never returned the call. Privacy is always a concern, especially when information is collected without people’s consent or knowledge.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn addition, agencies already short-staffed may find these efforts labor intensive. Chicago’s algorithm had to be tweaked since it at first flagged things like people wanting to throw-up if they heard \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGL2rytTraA\u0026amp;feature=kp\"\u003eKelis’ Milkshake\u003c/a\u003e one more time. But where there’s a will, there’s a way; the city made the code \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/smartchicago/foodborne\"\u003eopen source\u003c/a\u003e to get some help.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll this is to say that this is an intriguing use of social media—not to reach your audience, but to make your audience reach you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEden Savino\u003c/strong\u003e is a Senior Analyst in the Health Care team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}