Epidemiological surveillance is an important issue of public health policy. In this paper, we describe a method based on knowledge extraction from news and news classification to understand the epidemic evolution. Descriptive studies are useful for gathering information on the incidence and characteristics of an epidemic. New approaches, based on new modes of mass publication through the web, a...

Epidemiological surveillance is an important issue of public health policy. In this paper, we describe a method based on knowledge extraction from news and news classification to understand the epidemic evolution. Descriptive studies are useful for gathering information on the incidence and characteristics of an epidemic. New approaches, based on new modes of mass publication through the web, a...

Twitter is widely seen as being the go to place for breaking news. Recently however, competing Social Media have begun to carry news. Here we examine how Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter report on breaking news. We consider coverage (whether news events are reported) and latency (the time when they are reported). Using data drawn from three weeks in December 2013, we identify 29 major news eve...

Probabilistic models can learn users’ preferences from the history of their item adoptions on a social media site, and in turn, recommend new items to users based on learned preferences. However, current models ignore psychological factors that play an important role in shaping online social behavior. One such factor is attention, the mechanism that integrates perceptual and cognitive features ...

The growing influence of internet platforms acting as content aggregators is one the most important challenges facing media industry. We develop a simple model to understand impact third-party bundling by social platform that has monopoly on showing user-generated consumers. In our model, consumers can access news either directly through newspaper’s website or indirectly platform, which also of...

The Board of Parks and Recreation in Vancouver, BC approved a smoke-free bylaw in the city's parks, beaches and recreational facilities, effective 1 September 2010. We analyzed local news coverage and portrayal of the bylaw to understand the potential influence of news media on public perception of the bylaw in order to inform the media advocacy work of public health interest groups. We compile...

This paper employs public opinion data from a nationally representative probability sample to examine how information encounters and exposure to different media sources relate to individuals' beliefs about global warming. The analyses indicate that media source exposure (i.e., exposure to news and information about science presented through different media outlets), intentional information expo...

Health knowledge and development have both direct and indirect consequences on people’s lives. Mass media, which functions as an intermediary between the medical community, government and the lay people, plays a central role in the transfer of information about health. However, the main medical criticism of the media is that it is alarmist and sensationalizing, provoking controversy. This situa...