Table 1. Parameters of the Ebola-related news media contagion model of Eq 2 or Eq 3 (as appropriate to the sample), fit to the Ebola-related Google searches and tweets.

	N	f	β*f	1/γ (days)
Tweets: keyword “Ebola”	251,000	0.0012 [0.0011, 0.0032]	180 [140, 210]	-
Tweets: keywords “Ebola” and “symptoms”	2,350	1e−05 [9.7e−06,2.8e−05]	1.7 [1.3,2.2]	-
Google searches: “Ebola”	26,100,000	0.12 [0.097,0.18]	22000 [17000, 31000]	0.7 [0.3,3.1]
Google searches: “Ebola symptoms”	4,240,000	0.017 [0.015,0.022]	4000 [3200, 5100]	0.7 [0.3,1.9]
Google searches: “Do I have Ebola”	22,200	8.8e−05 [7.6e−05,0.00014]	25 [16, 71]	3.8 [1.4,14.3]

The parameter f is the initial fraction of the population susceptible to news media induced Ebola interest or panic (as manifested by the particular Ebola-related Internet searches or tweets in our samples). The parameter β is the transmission rate, and 1/γ is the average time, in days between an individual viewing an Ebola-related news video, and performing an Ebola-related Google search or tweet. The average number of particular Internet searches or tweets in our samples inspired by a single news video in the initial susceptible population is fβ. The numbers in the square brackets represent the 95% confidence intervals.