Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Wasim Ahmed
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
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.
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 provided by Altmetric
