Dynamics of the impact of Twitter with time delay on the spread of infectious diseases.

In this paper, a mathematical model to study the impact of Twitter in controlling infectious disease is proposed. The model includes the dynamics of “tweets” which may enhance awareness of the disease and cause behavioral changes among the public, thus reducing the transmission of the disease. Furthermore, the model is improved by introducing a time delay between the outbreak of disease and the release of Twitter messages. The basic reproduction number and the conditions for the stability of the equilibria are derived. It is shown that the system undergoes Hopf bifurcation when time delay is increased. Finally, numerical simulations are given to verify the analytical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]