**Preface to "Social Media and Public Health: Opportunities and Challenges"**

We are living in an information age, with more user-generated data being generated than ever before. The rise of user-generated content derrives from the popularity of social media and other digital platforms. Social media platforms provide unfiltered public views and opinions with the ability to extract intelligence for public health purposes. This can range from using social media to track the spread of diseases to the opinion-mining of public views and opinions.

Social media and associated tehcnologies can also be drawn upon for rapid, survey-based insights into various health topics. Social media are also widely utilised by medical professionals for the purposes of sharing scholarly works, international collaboration, and engaging in policy debates and have also been drawn upon in medical emergencies and crisis situations.

This book is based on a collection of research articles that were published in a special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health which was titled: Social Media and Public Health: Opportunities and Challenges (First Edition). We hope that this body of work can stimulate further excellent work in this area and that organisations can find practical value in the research.

> **Wasim Ahmed, Josep Vidal-Alaball** *Editors*

International Journal of *Environmental Research and Public Health*
