The percentage of the variance, <i>R</i>², of the Ebola-related Twitter and Google search samples described by the contagion model of Eq 2 or Eq 3 (as appropriate to the sample); shown are the <i>R</i>² of the model fit to the full sample, the first half of the sample (model validation training sample), and the extrapolated model prediction for the remaining half of the sample (model validation test sample).

Also shown are the R2 for the statistical model, which linearly regresses the data samples on the daily number of Ebola-related news videos. The percentage of the variance, R2, of the Ebola-related Twitter and Google search samples described by the contagion model of Eq 2 or Eq 3 (as appropriate to the sample); shown are the R2 of the model fit to the full sample, the first half of the sample (model validation training sample), and the extrapolated model prediction for the remaining half of the sample (model validation test sample).