Online work force analyzes social media to identify consequences of an unplanned school closure – using technology to prepare for the next pandemic

We used the social media-monitoring platform Radian6 (San Francisco, CA) to retrospectively capture social media posts related to the Chicago City School District closure in September 2012. Social media in dataset include posts from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, and comments between September 8 and September 12, (two days before the strike started to two days after the strike ended). We used the following combination of search terms: “strike Chicago” AND “breakfast” OR “childcare” OR “daycare” OR “lunch” OR “parent”.  A proximity score of “5” was applied to the terms “strike” and “Chicago” (on a scale of 1–20, with 1 being exact [i.e., strike and Chicago together]).<div><br></div><div>Column headings include:  Unique post identifying number (NUMBER), post content (CONTENT), social media provider (MEDIA_PROVIDER), and publishing date/time (PUBLISH_DATE).  </div><div><br></div><div>These posts were reviewed and categorized as relevant (related to impact of closure on students and their families) or irrelevant (describing political aspects of strike, welfare system, or other unrelated topics).  Relevant posts were further analyzed for underlying sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative).</div

Number of relevant posts identified from social media by sentiment^a and date.

<p>Relevant posts mentioned impact of unplanned school closure due to Chicago teachers’ strike from September 8–21, 2012 (two days before and three days after strike) on students and their families (n = 930). ^aSentiment definitions: Positive: The author expressed a good or favorable experience as a result of the closure. Example of positive post: “Another day without school, a day to play.” Negative: The author expressed inconveniences or undesirable effect as a result of the closure. Example of negative post: “I can’t find childcare”. Neutral: The author did not express any particular sentiment. Example of neutral post: “Schools will be open at 8:00 to serve breakfast to students”.</p

Sentiment score of relevant posts identified from social media by date.

<p>Relevant posts mentioned impact of unplanned school closure due to Chicago teachers’ strike from September 8–21 (two days before to three days after strike) on students and their families (N = 930). Sentiment score was calculated as: (positive posts—negative posts)/(positive posts + negative posts + neutral posts)^a-b. ^aSentiment score < 0 suggests negative sentiment; score > 0 suggests positive sentiment. ^bScore on September 21 reflects only four relevant posts, all expressing negative sentiment.</p

Distribution of relevant and irrelevant posts by social media type.

<p>Relevant posts further categorized according negative, positive, and neutral sentiment. Posts captured from social media referencing Chicago teachers’ strike from September 8–21, 2012 (two days before to three days after strike).</p

Qualitative comparison of the Chicago teacher’s strike social media findings with results from traditional household surveys in Mississippi, Colorado, and Kentucky and a telephone poll about the costs and consequences of unplanned school closures^a.

<p>Qualitative comparison of the Chicago teacher’s strike social media findings with results from traditional household surveys in Mississippi, Colorado, and Kentucky and a telephone poll about the costs and consequences of unplanned school closures<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0163207#t003fn001" target="_blank">^a</a>.</p