Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

A comparison of information sharing behaviours across 379 health conditions on Twitter

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Wasim Ahmed

Downloads


Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

ObjectivesTo compare information sharing of over 379 health conditions on Twitter to uncover trends and patterns of online user activities.MethodsWe collected 1.5 million tweets generated by over 450,000 Twitter users for 379 health conditions, each of which was quantified using a multivariate model describing engagement, user and content aspects of the data and compared using correlation and network analysis to discover patterns of user activities in these online communities.ResultsWe found a significant imbalance in terms of the size of communities interested in different health conditions, regardless of the seriousness of these conditions. Improving the informativeness of tweets by using, for example, URLs, multimedia and mentions can be important factors in promoting health conditions on Twitter. Using hashtags on the contrary is less effective. Social network analysis revealed similar structures of the discussion found across different health conditions.ConclusionsOur study found variance in activity between different health communities on Twitter, and our results are likely to be of interest to public health authorities and officials interested in the potential of Twitter to raise awareness of public health.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Zhang Z, Ahmed W

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: International Journal of Public Health

Year: 2019

Volume: 64

Issue: 3

Pages: 431-440

Print publication date: 01/04/2019

Online publication date: 26/12/2018

Acceptance date: 23/11/2018

Date deposited: 27/06/2019

ISSN (print): 1661-8556

ISSN (electronic): 1661-8564

Publisher: Birkhaeuser Science

URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-018-1192-5

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-018-1192-5


Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric


Share