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Facebook is the most popular social network in the United States, and according to a recent survey, nearly half of pubic media audiences are using the service. Many stations have already created Facebook profiles and are connecting with their fans on the site. Facebook also offers a set of tools that makes it possible to integrate social networking features directly on your station’s website.

FluPortal has published a guide to using Facebook in your H1N1 coverage. Facebook can enhance your H1N1 reporting and online capabilities in numerous ways, from helping you crowdsource story ideas to facilitating online discussions about the pandemic. And placing your content within Facebook’s social stream can dramatically expand the reach of your H1N1 coverage.

During crisis situations, Facebook can be a vital link to your audience to communicate critical, time-sensitive information. Social media is most effective during crises when organizations have an established and active presence on websites like Facebook. The online relationships you build today will pay off when you need them most.

Whether you’re just getting started with Facebook, or looking to expand your station’s use of the service, FluPortal’s guide to using Facebook can help you assess the tools and options available.

If you’re reporting on the “voluntary hold” on GlaxoSmithKlein’s H1N1 vaccine in Canada, here’s a creative-commons photo you could use to illustrate a story. It’s free; all you have to do is credit the photographer properly.

Max Plante, an IT analyst from Quebec City, took the picture just last week. He says — though you’d have to confirm it — that this is “where the H1N1 vaccine is produced for all of Canada.”

[MaxPlante / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

For tips on how to find other free H1N1 photos for your site, try this post.

The FluPortal blog will be quiet over the Thanksgiving break. Check back for new posts starting Monday November 30th.

American Public Media’s Public Insight Network is leading a pubmedia charge into collaborative journalism. It taps into the wisdom of 70,000+ volunteer sources by letting them share expertise and news tips. We invited Joellen Easton, a public insight analyst for APM, to explain the Network’s usefulness for H1N1 coverage.
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A story like H1N1 can be tricky for journalists. Sound the alarm too loudly and panic sets in. Give the issue too little attention and people don’t take the threat as seriously as they should. Even health officials are struggling with how much information is too much information. For newsrooms, that balance comes from accuracy, context, explanatory reporting, and smart sourcing. We need to know what’s happening in the schools, the workplace, and at home. We need to hear what people are experiencing and how they’re coping. And to make sure our coverage reflects the reality on the ground, we can engage our audience editorially: it’s community engagement for your station with newsroom impact.

At American Public Media and other public media newsrooms that use Public Insight Journalism, journalists are gathering insight into H1N1 community impact from listeners and readers, and incorporating new ideas and new sources suggested by the audience into reporting.

MPR News asked its Public Insight Network and listeners:

• A general query: What questions do you have about H1N1? The questions people shared with the MPR newsroom influenced the content of an H1N1 FAQ page.
• To workers: What do you know about flu-related absenteeism and other workplace concerns? A hardware store owner provided insight into the world and worries of small business in this Web commentary.
• To health care pros: Will you get a flu shot? MPR News had sources in hand for a story about health care workers planning on skipping the flu shot.
• To pharmacists: How are you coping with demand? A pharmacist shared how he is making his own Tamiflu at his pharmacy to meet demand, and MPR’s Lorna Benson broke the story.

Public insight has become a part of how the newsroom chases and tells the H1N1 story, and how it prospects for new story leads. We always ask targeted questions, but leave the door open for news tips and related leads.

One of APM’s partners, the St. Louis Beacon, asked its readers “How are you getting ready for a major flu outbreak?”, collected responses, and then reported a fresh angle on the swine flu story. Other partner newsrooms at Colorado Public Radio, SCPR, and NHPR are also collecting insight and creating H1N1 source lists.

Public Insight Journalism’s particular method of partnering with the audience involves a database of 77,000 volunteer sources, on-air and online promos, email, web questionnaires, and social media outreach, as well as dedicated journalists who comb through responses, distill insights, identify sources, and work with reporters and editors to use that insight in coverage. You can learn more about PIJ here.

Meantime, you can create a mini version of PIJ using free online survey tools. I like Google Forms because it doesn’t scream “marketing,” you can customize it, and it integrates smoothly into Google Docs for exporting responses, maintaining source lists, etc. Every form you create will have a unique link, which you can email, post on your Web site, tweet, post to your station’s Facebook fan page, and call out to on the air. (You can find tutorials for Google Docs and Google Forms online.)

However you editorially engage your community, the important thing is to listen to what people are telling you, and use their insights to guide your reporting. If you do, your stories should be richer, deeper, and more relevant.

Joellen Easton is a public insight analyst in American Public Media’s Public Insight Journalism division, where she adds mojo to Marketplace‘s reporting by engaging the Public Insight Network. She also works with news directors and public insight analysts at eight public media partner organizations around the county to help them integrate public insight into their reporting.

Order Turkey? Check. Pick a pumpkin-pie recipe? Check. Remember not to cough or sneeze on relatives?… The Thanksgiving crowds at airports and around dining-room tables will be ideal breeding grounds for H1N1. To preempt a holiday viral feast, the CDC has just released its H1N1 travel guidelines. This public-awareness campaign includes an e-card promoting travel-sized hand sanitizer and tissues, guidelines for cruise ships, and this printable poster:

[CDC]

Check out the guidelines page to find other possible seasonal adornments for your H1N1 page.

National Public Radio‘s multimedia team has produced a new nationwide influenza map, and public media stations are welcome to embed the widget on their websites. The map shows the prevalence of flu-like illness by region and compares this year’s data with the percentage of flu related cases reported last year. To feed the map, NPR is using official data provided by the CDC. The map does not differentiate between H1N1 and seasonal flu. Most flu cases are not being tested to confirm if they are 2009 H1N1 flu, and the overwhelming majority of flu cases this season are from the swine flu, according to the CDC.

There are two sizes of the map widget stations can grab and embed: The large map is 600 x 425 pixels and the smaller version is 300 x 250. Once embedded, the widget will update automatically with the latest flu data.

[gui.tavares / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

Cultural responses to swine flu — in art, in behavior, in language — have proliferated almost as rapidly as the virus itself. Here’s an example that might inspire you to chase down this angle on H1N1.

Last week, we posted some photos of H1N1 street art that you can use on your site. Guilherme Tavares left a comment, saying he had made one of the pig stencils we featured. He’s a 27-year-old graphic designer and photographer living in Pelotas, Brazil, who “always had a crush on the street art, specially stencils with clever/ironic messages, like the work of Banksy.” I asked Tavares why he’d taken on H1N1. He sent back this terrific response:

The idea of the masked pig came, of course, in the middle of the swine-flu crisis that was all over the news [this spring]. I thought I could use that to create some kind of curiousity-teaser street art thing. I immediately thought of doing a masked pig, and then I realized it would be more expressive and iconic if I used a gas mask. I believe the gas mask has a stronger meaning and does a better parody of the whole “fear” situation being spreaded. It resembles other kinds of situations of massive fear like times of war, when people were afraid of chemical weapons, anthrax, etc. Also the shape of the gas mask looks more like the pigs face, and also has something of science fiction within it. There isn’t one specific meaning, but the point is the image is strong enough to recall lots of meanings from situations like the one we were living. So I believe it works great as an ironic cartoon of the whole thing.

I wanted to capture the attention of people out on streets. The catch is that everybody was afraid of “bumping into the flu” somewhere, but suddenly they bump into it as an art form, a pig with a mask on a wall, quietly watching you. They might find it strange, they might laugh about it, the importance is that they will think about it. Who is that pig after all? Is is just a pig or does it represent the flu? Who is wearing that mask, me or the pig? Maybe the pig is the people and the exagerated mask represents the exagerated fear, the mask of fear that the media was putting in people’s heads, once again. The point is to provoke more questions than answers, actually.

By the time I had the stencil cut out I called a friend of mine to help me with the painting. This guy was Fabricio Marcon. [...]

There were no specific criteria to choose the walls. We wanted not just busy places, but places where people would actually see it and have time to think about it. And of course, no private places, no house walls, we are no vandals. So the first one we painted is the one you posted on your blog. That wall surrounds an empty field and is already full of graffiti. It is located next to a park where people hang out, so definitely people would have time to see the pig, think and talk about it. This is in the northern area of the city.

The second one, we took no picture. We drove to the southern area of the city and painted at the wall of the Art and Design Institute (where we graduated, actually). It is also right in front of an outdoor pub where art students hang out, so once again, they would see the job and have the time to discuss it.

By the time we did the third and last one, our cardboard stencil was almost destroyed, so we decided to do a last paint in the actual center of the city, where hundreds of people walk every day. We drove around and found that pink wooden wall (which is a construction barrier) and decided to do it there because of the pink color that would match with the pig figure.[...]

Tavares and Marcon worked on their H1N1 pigs as an art collective they called “quemfoiquefez?” — which means “whodidthat?” in Porguguese. See more photos of their swine-flu art here.

David Baron [Shifting Ground]

As we’ve noted before, pandemics are by nature a worldwide issue. But once they hit home, it’s no small challenge to track what’s happening in the rest of the world in ways that won’t confuse or distance an already-saturated audience.

David Baron is Health & Science Editor for PRI’s The World. He says that when H1N1 first emerged last spring, the need for a global perspective was clear: people wanted to know how and where the virus might spread, and how bad it would be. Now that the virus is widespread in the United States, attention has turned to domestic issues such as school closings, vaccine availability, and government preparedness at all levels.

The H1N1 pandemic remains a very important story for The World, which covers global events and how they affect the U.S. The question they face now is: “How do we keep it a World story?” David and his team are constantly seeking global angles that connect with the needs and interests of their American listeners.

Those of us who assume the inherent importance of global coverage might be surprised to learn of its complexities. Take this report by Gerry Hadden that aired a few weeks ago.

“H1N1 Flu Shot Ambivalence in Europe” by Gerry Hadden (transcript)

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David explains:

We saw a news item in which many Germans said that if they were offered a vaccine for H1N1, they would not get it. We wanted to know why Germans are so opposed, while Americans are so in favor. I assumed the story Gerry would get is that the average German is not that aware of how important the vaccine is, or that they don’t trust the German government. I assumed that doctors would be on board, but that wasn’t exactly the case. Even the German medical establishment was wary of the vaccine and was discouraging people from getting it unless they were in a high-risk group. The message from German doctors was much more negative than the message from doctors in the U.S.

I struggled with how to put this on the air in a way that wouldn’t confuse people and wouldn’t undermine the public health message here. But at the same time, I don’t want to censor anybody. If this is what German doctors are saying, of course we should let them say it on our program.

Ultimately, David chose to start the segment with an interview with an official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to remind American listeners of the U.S. government’s message, before “confusing” them with the contrasting view from Germany. He then followed Gerry Hadden’s piece with an interview with a British social scientist about different cultural attitudes to the H1N1 vaccine.

“Cultural Attitudes About Swine Flu Vaccine” by Marco Werman (transcript)

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As David surveys the globe for more swine flu stories, he wants to avoid simply assembling “a collection of facts,” of just telling listeners what’s happening in different countries. Rather, he’s going for the “why.”

Why does one country react in one way, and another country react in a totally different way? That, in some ways, is the most interesting story.

And that’s what led to this World report last week about panic in the Ukraine stoked by a mixture of politics, media, and culture.

“Ukraine Takes Drastic Measures Against Swine Flu” by Brigid McCarthy (transcript)

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We asked David for his advice to local public media stations when it comes to covering swine flu worldwide.

Honestly, what’s happening in the rest of the world is not what the majority of Americans care about most. But they will care if and when the virus mutates and becomes more dangerous or more lethal, or if it develops resistance to existing drugs or the vaccine.

Newsrooms across the United States should be keeping an eye overseas, tracking the progress of H1N1 and other viruses, in order to anticipate coverage needs at home. And, with so many waiting in the wings, David says, “We’ll all have to get used to covering these stories again and again.”

Note: The World has several podcasts to help you track their coverage. Much of their swine flu coverage makes it into The World Science Podcast.

[roblisameehan / cc / Flickr]

We recently came across this USA Today H1N1 Flu Map and it immediately raised a few red flags for us. At first glance, the map appears to offer the exact number of H1N1 cases by region. Here’s the problem: no one is actually counting individual cases of H1N1 at this stage of the pandemic and there is no indication on the USA Today map that their numbers represent estimates. Additionally, the count of H1N1 cases listed (sourced to the CDC) bears little resemblance to recent estimates from the CDC.

We raise the  issue not to highlight the mistakes of the USA Today map, but to encourage caution and diligence when reporting the number and location of swine flu cases. There is an understandable inclination to provide specific numbers and geographic data to your audience. It’s frustrating that there are no official hard numbers to report. The danger lies in what fills that vacuum.

A number of popular flu maps, such as FluTracker, Google Flu Trends, and Health Map, (which feeds data to the Harvard Med School iPhone app we recently featured) rely on a mix of formal and informal sources to build out their source data. These informal sources can include self reporting, media reports, and even the frequency of flu-related keyword searches. Be careful using this kind of information as a replacement for official estimates. There is a high risk of bad data self-replicating among these platforms — and in your reports.

Since the end of August, the CDC has been providing estimates of H1N1 cases based on routine surveillance methods and statistical samples of hospitalizations and deaths for flu-like symptoms. Last week, the CDC released its new methodology for tracking the spread of H1N1. The count remains based on estimates, but the CDC feels it is a more accurate picture of the current situation. They are providing general estimates along with more specific numbers (pdf) that allow you to see how they extrapolate estimates from their surveillance methods.

So take a moment to check the official CDC estimates before running with a number published elsewhere. And if you have any questions or need additional information about official estimates, contact the CDC press office for clarification.

[Flu.gov on Twitter]

In September, the Department of Health and Human Services launched its renovated Flu.gov website, which assembles influenza information from several government agencies. It’s directed at the general public and at health-care and other professionals. The overhaul aimed to make the site as useful and user-friendly as possible — to attract a larger audience. In working on the site, HHS relied heavily on social media to figure out what people really wanted to know about H1N1. The interactive tools it used and the lessons it learned might be helpful to you in customizing your own H1N1 web page — and also in reporting swine-flu stories.

Andrew Wilson, head of social media for HHS, was a primary architect of the new site. His research included lots of H1N1 keyword searches on sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google Blog Search to “see what people were talking and asking about.” If the number of relevant Twitter tweets was overwhelming, he’d dump them into a Wordle tag cloud to see what issues surfaced most often.

Wilson also needed to figure out what information people were looking for when they came specifically to Flu.gov. So his team put a questionnaire front and center on the homepage asking for feedback. It also used web metrics to figure out which parts of the site people visited most often.

The overall results? “People really want to know the basics,” Wilson told me, “regardless of what you think they already know.” Many visitors “were going to the FAQ pages, which weren’t well highlighted at the time. So we raised their visibility and put them on the homepage.”

Wilson continues to use social media to “listen in” on the national H1N1 conversation. He has found an online community of people interested in flu issues — people whose expertise he has come to trust. These people, he says, “act as another set of educated eyes” and help him “pull out a meaningful signal” from the “noise in social media.” They are, in other words, sources: people he can consult when a story breaks. He just happened to cultivate them online. You could too.

Wilson left me with a specific tip for local reporters who want to use social media to find H1N1 stories: use location keywords (the name of your neighborhood or town or region) in your blog, Twitter, and other searches. It’ll help you find leads near you.

A final note: Flu.gov of course uses social media not just to listen but also to get the word out. Its Twitter stream is here; it’s Facebook page is here. HHS’s H1N1 videos on YouTube are here. You can find Andrew Wilson here on Twitter, and he’s always eager for feedback about Flu.gov.

You may already have watched this animated (in both senses of the word) video from NPR. If not, it’s well worth the three and a half minutes. It explains memorably how flu viruses make us sick — produced and narrated by Robert Krulwich.

[Robert Krulwich / NPR]

It’s freely and easily embeddable, so you could use it to illustrate any H1N1 story — or simply add it to your H1N1 page to keep your audience informed.