If you've been awake any time from late summer to now, you're probably well aware that we're in the midst of the worst Ebola outbreak in history. You almost can't go online these days without seeing at least one headline related to this epidemic that has the world in a panic.
Like with most major news stories, talk of the Ebola outbreak has dominated Twitter for the past couple of months. The outbreak escalated in West Africa in late July and early August and when the first Americans diagnosed with the disease arrived in the U.S. for treatment, conversation about the disease on social media took off. While developments about the outbreak continued to grab headlines, it seemed like people weren't talking about the disease as much on social media from late August to mid-September. But from Sept. 16 to Oct. 6, there were 10.5 million tweets sent from 170 countries around the world that mentioned the word "Ebola," according to TIME.
And now we know what this looks like. Using data from Twitter, TIME has created an animated map to show how conversation about Ebola escalated on Twitter in early October.
On Sept. 30, a Liberian man was diagnosed with Ebola at a Dallas hospital, the first travel-associated case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It makes sense that on Oct. 1, the map would light up like a Christmas tree to show how Twitter became ablaze with talk about the disease. More than 6,000 tweets about Ebola were sent during the night of Oct. 1, TIME reported.
You also may notice that conversation about Ebola on Twitter slightly escalates during the middle of September. This is probably because President Obama delivered remarks on the Ebola outbreak in which he said, "chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low."
Twitter reverb also created an interesting interactive graphic showing how the frequency of Ebola mentions on Twitter changed over time and some of the most retweeted and favorited tweets on the subject. And in case you were wondering, 5 Seconds of Summer's Ashton Irwin's Oct. 1 tweet that said, "The Ebola virus is super scary, hopefully it can be contained!" is featured in the infographic.
As TIME pointed out, sharing information about the Ebola outbreak can be both fearmongering, as is the case with Irwin's tweet, or helpful in educating people about the virus, such as information from the CDC. Use your social media wisely, folks.
