Session 3 – 4th Virtual WHO Infodemic Management Conference

12 May 2021 13:30 – 15:30 CET

Introduction: Key challenges and opportunities for advancing social listening in public health

Building on progress from three WHO Infodemic Management Conferences last year, we are delighted to welcome you to join the 4th WHO Infodemic Management Conference (virtual) between 4 – 12 May 2021. WHO is proud to partner with US CDC for this conference, which brings together experts from different areas of research and practice to exchange lessons learned for advancing approaches in digital social listening for public health. Developing social listening approaches for teams to detect changes in community questions, concerns, and narratives will help to create a more adaptive and effective public health emergency response. This work is also needed to strengthen health systems for earlier detection of emerging and resurgent health threats.

While social listening methods have evolved, they are often intended to benefit corporate communication, marketing, and brand management, and need to be adapted to better hear from communities to improve health emergency preparedness and response. In public health, social listening is increasingly becoming an important method to understand narratives and sentiments shared online in various social media platforms. Social media data can help gauge public opinion for more human-centred design of communication and engagement strategies to address public concerns before they are amplified or lead to harmful practices. This can help to reach citizens who are undecided or confused about adopting COVID-19 public health and social measures, including vaccination.

New public health applications for social listening can also assist health authorities in responding to public concerns in a relatively short turnaround time, enabling revised and improved messaging, and more targeted interventions.

Analysis of social networks have shown polarization for COVID-19 health topics, and this polarization is exacerbating information bottlenecks, making it difficult to ensure universal access to credible health information. Network analysis also enables recognition of influential users within a network – including how closely connected they are to other influential users – for understanding opinion drivers on a specific issue. For COVID-19, social media data can help to characterize trends, the type of information spreading across platforms, and spread of information using epidemic models, as well as the diffusion of varying levels of (in)accurate information.

There is a need for greater clarity about best practices and tools to improve social listening and social network analysis in a public health context for a more focused, adaptive, and effective COVID-19 response.

To address this need, WHO is virtually convening experts and participants to share advances in social listening for public health. Join us!