Case Study: Health Media Collaboratory achieves actionable public-health insights from social media with Tableau Software

Health Media Collaboratory Social data for public health insight

Health Media Collaboratory is a nonprofit research group whose mission is “data for public good.” It collects and analyzes social media—from Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube and WordPress—to study how online messages influence health behavior. The team faced the challenge of messy, metadata-rich social data and the need to turn about 1.75 million tweets (collected over a 409‑day period) into quick, actionable insights that busy funders and public‑health partners could use.

Using Tableau to clean, map and visualize longitudinal and geolocated social data, the Collaboratory turned large tweet datasets into clear histograms and cluster maps that reveal weekly peaks in conversations about quitting smoking. Those visualizations let tobacco‑control organizations and funders spot optimal outreach moments, allocate resources more effectively, and get instant, presentation-ready insights instead of lengthy reports.

Health Media Collaboratory

Glen Szczypka

Deputy Director