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IKTPLUSS-IKT og digital innovasjon

Social Media Health Analytics

Awarded: NOK 99,999

The funding should lay the foundation for the participation of Norut on an ICT-related H2020-proposal, within the emerging research field of Social Media Health Analytics. Most effort will be allocated to disseminate across potential high-level partners the research skills and agenda of Norut. This effort will be done with close partnership with the NCP and officials in Brussels (e.g. participation in info days and training workshops) The initially proposed project idea will aim at developing a tool for early detection of health pernicious rumours (e.g. anti-vaccination propaganda and rumours) by real time analysis of multiple sources of data (social media, public health, and socioeconomic data). The difficult part is how to analyze and model this data. The plan in the project is to develop models primarily based on sentiment analysis and community detection for analysing network structure. These models can then be used to detect what rumours that have potential to cause harm from a public health point of view. Big Data from public health and social media is combined using advanced visualization techniques. Early detection of vaccination mistrust is essential for controlling future pandemics. To be able to deal with vaccine hesitancy, health authorities must know what rumours circulate and what groups are feeding these rumours. While the data is easily accessible, they are unstructured and unanalysed. The project connects the competence of multidisciplinary research consortium with expertise in big data analysis, public health, psychology, anthropology and modelling. Noruts eHealth team is collaborating with leading researchers in this emerging field (Social Media Health Analyltics). Early stage collaboration is ongoing with researchers involved in major related European projects (e.g. EPIWORK-FET, CONGAS-FET, AdvanceVaccines-IMI). The project described here will allow Norut to position itself within that top-level research community.

Funding scheme:

IKTPLUSS-IKT og digital innovasjon