H1N1 and New Media

Happy new year to all of you communication scholars out there! Looking back at 2009, one of the biggest stories was the Swine Flu and what contributed to or helped thwart its spread. The Boston Globe had a piece in December about how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) used YouTube and Twitter to get the public information about the epidemic. The article notes the challenges of condensing complicated scientific information into 140 characters and discusses how the CDC "has become the predominant online choice for swine flu information." I think the CDC's use of new media to communicate about H1N1 will be a model for future public health communication campaigns.