The WHO has identified scientific misinformation as a public health crisis, calling it an “infodemic.” Social media allows misinformation to spread quickly and out-compete scientifically grounded information. Dear Pandemic is an innovative, multidisciplinary, social media-based science communication project led by women scientists across several institutions around the US and the UK. The mission is to educate and empower individuals to successfully navigate the overwhelming amount of information. The goals are: 1) To disseminate trustworthy, comprehensive, and timely scientific content about the pandemic to lay audiences, and 2) To promote media and health literacy, equipping readers to better manage the COVID-19 infodemic within their own networks. More than one year after launch, the project has a combined monthly reach of > 5 million people across 4 social media channels (2 Facebook pages in English and Spanish; Instagram; and Twitter).

Next steps include impact evaluations, and the development of research projects to evaluate the use of social media for surveillance of misinformation, track trends in attitudes and perspectives related to COVID-19 and the vaccines, and to develop and test strategies for infodemic management.

We are seeking students with expertise/interest in analyzing social media data (especially Facebook) who can help with crafting specific research questions. The goal will be to develop journal publication(s) and pilot data for larger grants that can eventually pay for students’ time. Students will join our regular research meetings (via Zoom) where we brainstorm ideas and present works-in-progress.

Note: we are also interested in co-mentorship with DSI faculty.

This is an UNPAID research project.

Faculty Advisor

  • Professor: [Sandra Albrecht](Faculty website: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/people/our-faculty/ssa2018; Project website: https://dearpandemic.org/)
  • Center/Lab:
  • Dr. Albrecht is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. She is a social epidemiologist that has been engaged in social media-based scientific communication efforts, in English and Spanish, since the start of the pandemic, to help individuals, communities, and policy-makers make evidence-based decisions around health.

Project Timeline

  • Earliest starting date: 10/1/21
  • End date:
  • Number of hours per week of research expected during Fall 2021: ~10
  • Number of hours per week of research expected during Summer 2022: ~20

Candidate requirements

  • Skill sets: Experience analyzing social media data, especially Facebook; advanced programming skills; recommended to also have skills in natural language processing, machine learning approaches, social network analyses
  • Student eligibility: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, master’s
  • International students on F1 or J1 visa: eligible
  • Academic Credit Possible: Yes
  • Additional comments: Other recommended, but not required skills include Spanish language ability to work with data from our Spanish-language social media site. For non-Spanish speakers, there will be opportunity to work with our English language data.