Researchers find a better way to screen the tweets
Sifting through social media messages has become a popular
way to track when and where flu cases occur, but a key hurdle hampers the
process: how to identify flu-infection tweets. Some tweets are posted by people
who have been sick with the virus, while others come from folks who are merely
talking about the illness. If you are tracking actual flu cases, such
conversations about the flu in general can skew the results.