Analyzing social media discourse of avian influenza outbreaks

Abstract

The ongoing avian influenza outbreaks have had significant implications for the global poultry industry in addition to a wide range of wild birds and mammals. To enhance our understanding of public perceptions and reactions during such outbreaks, the present study examined social media discourse surrounding avian influenza on X (formerly known as Twitter). By employing advanced large language models, including DistilBERT for post filtering (average 89.5% accuracy via 5-fold cross-validation) along with Mixtral-8x7B, BERTopic, and RoBERTa for sentiment and topic/user analysis, this research categorizes the discussions and sentiments expressed by users over time. Our analysis focused on three aspects: main topics, sentiment, and temporal patterns of user engagement surrounding avian influenza outbreaks. Sentiment analysis revealed that a majority of posts related to economic impact (81.2%), wildlife (71.7%), and human cases (67.9%) expressed negative sentiment. Through topic modeling, prevalent topics of concern were identified in discussions, including concerns about transmission to humans and mammals, as well as issues related to food security and food prices. Additionally, the analysis of user engagement patterns showed distinct categories of users and highlighted the contributions of top users in shaping the discourse. Emotion analysis showed that over 80% of posts on major topics conveyed emotions such as anger, sadness, and fear, especially during periods of high case reports. The present study underscores the potential of social media analysis to understand public reactions to avian influenza outbreaks and to facilitate effective responses to public concerns and needs.