Table 4.

Approach 2: Organizations' use of social media in communicating EIDs

Article	Type of EID	Type of social media	Organizations studied	Theoretical approach	Method and intercoder reliability	Major findings
Biswas3	H1N1	Twitter, Facebook	CDC, WHO	Outbreak communication	Manual content analysis	Types of messages: investigation or diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and update.
					No
						Facebook facilitated more interactivity because of its built-in features. However, both the CDC and WHO focused on 1-way communication instead of interacting with the public.
Ding and Zhang16	H1N1	All major social media	U.S. government (CDC and HHS)	Risk communication	Manual content analysis	CDC and HHS most frequently used Facebook in communicating with the public about H1N1, followed by Twitter, e-cards, buttons and badges, podcasts, Flickr, YouTube, and widgets. The functions served by these social media were updates, policies and guidelines, prevention topics, official actions and efforts, general information, and scientific research, in descending frequencies.
					No
Kim and Liu18	H1N1	Twitter, Facebook	13 government and corporate organizations	Situational crisis communication theory	Manual content analysis	Governmental organizations emphasized providing instructional information to their primary audience, such as guidelines about how to respond to a crisis, whereas corporations emphasized reputation management, frequently adopting denial, diminish, and reinforce response strategies.
					α = 0.77-1.0
Liu and Kim19	H1N1	Twitter, Facebook	13 government and corporate organizations	Framing, crisis communication	Manual content analysis	Organizations were more likely to frame the crisis as a disaster, a health crisis, or a general health issue on traditional media and were more likely to frame it as a general crisis on social media. Organizations relied on traditional media more than social media to address emotions.
					α = 0.77-1.0
Wong et al35	Ebola	Twitter	286 local health departments	None	Manual content analysis	78.6% tweets were information giving, 22.5% were on preparedness, 20.8% were news updates, and 10.3% were event promotion. Each wave of tweets corresponded with a major news event.
					r = 0.54-1.0
Studies of the public's responses to organizations' use of social media
Lazard et al28	Ebola	Twitter	CDC	None	Computer-assisted content analysis based on unsupervised text mining (SAS Text Miner)	This study identified 8 major concerns of the public, such as expert opinions, prevention, and questions.
Strekalova33	Ebola	Facebook	CDC	None	Manual content analysis	Men wrote more comments per person than women on CDC posts about Ebola.
					No

CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; EID, emerging infection disease; HHS, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services; WHO, World Health Organization.