ABC News, September 30, 2014
Symplur, a company that tracks health information trends on Twitter, said that Nigerians first began sending tweets using the words “Ebola,” “salt water” and “drinking” starting on Aug. 4 with social network activity ramping up to a peak of about 450 tweets on the day of Aug. 8.
“People seem to [have been] woken up by friends and relatives in the early morning in order to drink and bathe with salt because the local town doc said you needed to do this before sunrise,” said Thomas Lee, co-founder of Symplur, noting that much of the activity took place overnight. (…) “The power of social media to rapidly spread information, both accurate and inaccurate, is enormous, and nowhere is that more impactful than on topics related to our health,” said Lee.
— ABC News
