An Epidemiology of Information: Data Mining the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

FAIN: HJ-50067-12

Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA 24061-2000)
Tom Ewing (Project Director: July 2011 to November 2014)
Bernice Louise Hausman (Co Project Director: July 2011 to November 2014)

Using the digitized newspaper archives in the NEH-funded Chronicling America and Peel's Prairie Provinces, the project explores how the spread of information found in local newspapers about the 1918 influenza pandemic influenced policy makers and the general public. The project is led by scholars from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (US) and the University of Toronto (Canada) along with additional advisors from the University of Texas, McMaster University, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Alberta. The Canadian partner, the University of Toronto, is requesting $125,000 from SSHRC.

An Epidemiology of Information: Data Mining the 1918 Influenza Pandemic seeks to harness the power of data mining techniques with the interpretive analytics of the humanities and social sciences to understand how newspapers shaped public opinion and represented authoritative knowledge during this deadly pandemic. This project makes use of the more than 100 newspaper titles for 1918 available from Chronicling America at the United States Library of Congress and the Peel’s Prairie Provinces collection at the University of Alberta Library. The application of algorithmic techniques enables the domain expert to systematically explore a broad repository of data and identify qualitative features of the pandemic in the small scale as well as the genealogy of information flow in the large scale. This research can provide methods for understanding the spread of information and the flow of disease in other societies facing the threat of pandemics.

Associated Products

How the media can help fight the flu: Medical coverage should focus more on preventing common ailments and less on rare diseases, deaths and hysteria (Article)
Title: How the media can help fight the flu: Medical coverage should focus more on preventing common ailments and less on rare diseases, deaths and hysteria
Author: E. Thomas Ewing
Abstract: This fall, millions of people will get their flu shots, take appropriate sanitary measures and stay home when they are sick. Public health experts will declare, and most media reports will confirm, that these steps will help individuals avoid contracting influenza while also preventing the spread of disease to others. Yet while this coverage may seem relatively mundane, it is a significant achievement. So many other types of medical reporting dominate health headlines: sensationalist accounts of sudden outbreaks, unusual examples of individual deaths and exaggerated cases of celebrities who become ill, among them. And this sort of coverage is dangerous.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/19/how-media-can-help-fight-flu/
Access Model: Newspaper Subscription
Format: Newspaper
Periodical Title: Washington Post
Publisher: Washington Post

An Epidemiology of Information: A Digging into Data Challenge Project (Web Resource)
Title: An Epidemiology of Information: A Digging into Data Challenge Project
Author: E. Thomas Ewing
Abstract: This project seeks to understand how newspapers shaped public opinion during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Using data mining techniques combined with historical and rhetorical analysis, we explore hundreds of newspaper titles, including those from Chronicling America at the United States Library of Congress and the Peel’s Prairie Provinces collection at the University of Alberta Library, to understand the flow of information about the spread and impact of disease.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/19271

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