How an anonymous Twitter sleuth may have solved a Philadelphia hate crime (and restored our faith in the Internet)

Last Thursday, a little before 11 p.m., a group of “clean cut and well-dressed” 20-somethings strolling through Philadelphia’s moneyed Rittenhouse neighborhood called gay slurs at two men before launching an attack that sent both men to the hospital.

Four days later, Philadelphia police posted a surveillance video of the group on Youtube.

And mere hours after that, an anonymous Twitter user with the handle@FanSince09 announced that he’d found the perpetrators … entirely through social media.

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Originally published in The Washington Post

A Medical Consultation Service on Facebook: Descriptive Analysis of Questions Answered

Social media has changed the way the general public accesses health information [1]. With the increasing use of handheld mobile devices, health information may be readily available to an even larger public, as seen in the United States [2]. Facebook, the social media tool with the widest active user base, has 1.28 billion users as of March 31, 2014 [3]. Health information is distributed and discussed on many social media tools, and one in five Americans uses social media as a source of health care information [4]. Of Facebook users in the United States, 94% have used Facebook to gather information on their health [4]. 

However, user-generated health content on social media is generally inconsistent with clinical guidelines and professional knowledge, and non-biased information can be difficult to obtain [5]. Publicly funded services and institutes have a limited role in distributing health information on social media [6], possibly due to a lack of models for using social media in health information promotion [7,8]. In Finland, information on child health is traditionally delivered by “well-baby” clinics, which offer both general information on health care and address individual needs. At the moment, most of the information is delivered during patient visits and by telephone consultation. The clinics are understaffed with regard to the national recommendations, and this is reflected in their capacity to deliver health information [9]. It is evident that methods to reach a larger population are needed to meet the demand. As in the United States, although no such data exist, it is likely that the use of social media for seeking health information is increasing also in Finland. Stroever et al [10] found that social media was an effective way to communicate child health information to low-income parents. Furthermore, the information was considered reliable if distributed by perceived experts.

Originally Published in JMIR

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What's behind the challenge

By now, most people have seen friends or celebrities pour buckets of ice water over their heads as part of the "ice bucket challenge" for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neurodegenerative condition also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

This behavior has gone viral and taken over Facebook to an extent rarely achieved by health-care topics. Reflecting on why is important, because health systems working on topics ranging from colorectal screening to vaccinations have much to learn from this campaign.

via Philly.com

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What an Introvert Sounds Like

Do our Facebook posts reflect our true personalities? Incrementally, probably not. But in aggregate, the things we say on social media paint a fairly accurate portrait of our inner selves. A team of University of Pennsylvania scientists is using Facebook status updates to find commonalities in the words used by different ages, genders, and even psyches.

The so-called “World Well-Being Project” started as an effort to gauge happiness across various states and communities.

“Governments have an increased interest in measuring not just economic outcomes but other aspects of well-being,” said Andrew Schwartz, a UPenn computer scientist who works on the project. “But it's very difficult to study well-being at a large scale. It costs a lot of money to administer surveys to see how people are doing in certain areas. Social media can help with that.”

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Via The Atlantic

Researchers Fret as Social Media Lift Veil on Drug Trials

Drug makers and researchers are increasingly concerned that online chatter could unravel the carefully built construct of the clinical trial, and perhaps put patients in danger. They worry that patients may drop out if they suspect they aren't getting the drug being tested, or may report symptoms inaccurately because of the influence or suggestions of others in the trial.

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Originally published in The Wall Street Journal

Is Facebook Linked to Selfishness? Investigating the Relationships among Social Media Use, Empathy, and Narcissism

The rise of social networking sites have led to changes in the nature of our social relationships, as well as how we present and perceive ourselves. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship among the following in adults: use of a highly popular social networking site—Facebook, empathy, and narcissism. 

The findings indicated that some Facebook activities, such as chatting, were linked to aspects of empathic concern, such as higher levels of Perspective Taking in males. The Photo feature in Facebook was also linked to better ability to place themselves in fictional situations. For only the females, viewing videos was associated with the extent to which they could identify with someone’s distress. The data also indicated that certain aspects of Facebook use, such as the photo feature, were linked to narcissism. However, the overall pattern of findings suggests that social media is primarily a tool for staying connected, than for self-promotion.

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Originally published in Social Networking

A Bright Side to Facebook’s Experiments on Its Users

Facebook’s disclosure last week that it had tinkered with about 700,000 users’ news feeds as part of a psychology experiment conducted in 2012 inadvertently laid bare what too few tech firms acknowledge: that they possess vast powers to closely monitor, test and even shape our behavior, often while we’re in the dark about their capabilities.

The publication of the study, which found that showing people slightly happier messages in their feeds caused them to post happier updates, and sadder messages prompted sadder updates, ignited a torrent of outrage from people who found it creepy that Facebook would play with unsuspecting users’ emotions. Because the study was conducted in partnership with academic researchers, it also appeared to violate long-held rules protecting people from becoming test subjects without providing informed consent. Several European privacy agencies have begun examining whether the study violated local privacy laws.

Originally published in the New York Times

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Facebook Study Sparks Soul-Searching and Ethical Questions

A Facebook study on users' emotions sparked soul-searching among researchers and calls for better ethical guidelines in the online world.

"I do think this whole incident will cause a lot of rethinking" about the relationship between business and academic researchers, said Susan T. Fiske, the study's editor and a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.

Researchers from Facebook and Cornell University manipulated the news feed of nearly 700,000 Facebook users for a week in 2012 to gauge whether emotions spread on social media.

They found that users who saw more positive posts tended to write more positive posts themselves, and vice versa. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier in June, but sparked outrage after a blog post Friday said the study used Facebook users as "lab rats." 

[...]

Jonathan Moreno, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at University of Pennsylvania, also criticized the study. "You are sending people whose emotional state you don't know anything about communications that they might find disturbing," Dr. Moreno said. "That might or might not be something a research ethics board would worry about." 

via The Wall Street Journal

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"Privacy is Bad for Your Health" Lecture

Leslie Saxon wants companies to have our medical data and explained why at Wired Health. Saxon is the chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Keck School, USC. She is also the executive director of the Center for Body Computing (CBC) and in the years leading up to 2006 -- four spent in college and then 20+ as a practicing physician -- Saxon had interacted with over 37,000 patients. In 2006, she made the switch to digital health tracking, taking data wirelessly from patients' pacemakers and other devices. In the eight years since then, Saxon has seen 308,000 digital patient interactions. A ten-fold increase in patient turnover might seem a lot, but its nothing compared to the plans she wants to see in digital health's future. WIRED Health is a one-day summit designed to introduce, explain and predict the coming trends facing the medical and personal healthcare industries. This ambitious inaugural event was held on Tuesday April 29, at the new home of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 30 Euston Square, London.

Link to video of full lecture at Wired Health

This text was orignally posted on Wired UK

Facebook Content Cards Show Friend Activity When the Time Is Right

Facebook is rolling out a new feature to its iOS app that encourages users to share more about what they are doing.

The new feature, part of an app update rolling out to users Wednesday, will surface cards that reveal relevant posts from friends when you check in at a location or post an activity update, such as watching a movie or traveling to a new city.

The cards will appear over your News Feed after you update your status and will only display a few relevant posts at once.

If you check in at a restaurant, for example, the card might display a list of friends who have also checked in there or photos of the restaurant posted by other users. If you post an update about listening to a new song or reading a book, the card might show friends who have also listened to the song or read the book, and what they had to say about it.

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Originally from Mashable.

Facebook Acquires Moves, a Fitness Tracking App

Facebook Messenger. WhatsApp. Paper. Instagram. And now: Moves.

Facebook announced Thursday that it has acquired Moves, a popular fitness tracking app, as part of its broader strategy to operate a set of standalone applications in addition to the flagship Facebook app.

“As part of Facebook’s multi-app strategy, we’re excited to announce that the popular Moves app will be joining Facebook’s suite of applications," a Facebook rep said in a statement provided to Mashable.

The app launched for iPhone in early 2013 and is also available on Android. It has reportedly been downloaded more than 4 million times, and will continue to operate as a standalone app, while some members of its team join Facebook at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

Full article here.

Originally posted in Mashable.

Social Media Helped in Probe of Md. Rabies Death

HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Public health investigators say they used Facebook and other social media to find people potentially exposed to the rabies virus after a Maryland man died from the disease last year in a rare case of transmission through a transplanted organ.

Social media played an invaluable role in the investigation, the investigators said in an article detailing their work. But investigators must use such tools responsibly to avoid violating patient privacy and confidentiality, lead author Ryan M. Wallace of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

Originally Published at CBS DC

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Dr. Facebook gives contraceptive advice

Social media are particularly popular among young women; thus, a new study investigated whether providing young women with contraceptive advice via social media, specifically Facebook, would be effective for increasing their contraceptive knowledge and use. The study was published in the April edition of Obstetrics & Gynecology by researchers at New York–Presbyterian Hospital–Weill Cornell Medical Center and Columbia University.

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Link to the original research paper

Article originally published Examiner.com.