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Geotagged US tweets as predictors of county-level health outcomes, 2015-2016

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  • Nguyen, Q.C.
  • McCullough, M.
  • Meng, H.-W.
  • Paul, D.
  • Li, D.
  • Kath, S.
  • Loomis, G.
  • Nsoesie, E.O.
  • Wen, M.
  • Smith, K.R.
  • Li, F.

Abstract

Objectives. To leverage geotagged Twitter data to create national indicators of the social environment, with small-area indicators of prevalent sentiment and social modeling of health behaviors, and to test associations with county-level health outcomes, while controlling for demographic characteristics. Methods. We used Twitter's streaming application programming interface to continuously collect a random 1% subset of publicly available geo-located tweets in the contiguous United States. We collected approximately 80 million geotagged tweets from 603 363 unique Twitter users in a 12-month period (April 2015-March 2016). Results. Across 3135 US counties, Twitter indicators of happiness, food, and physical activity were associated with lower premature mortality, obesity, and physical inactivity. Alcohol-use tweets predicted higher alcohol-use-related mortality. Conclusions. Socialmedia represents a newtype of real-time data thatmay enable public healthofficials toexaminemovement ofnorms, sentiment, andbehaviors thatmayportend emerging issues or outbreaks-thus providing a way to intervene to prevent adverse health events and measure the impact of health interventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Nguyen, Q.C. & McCullough, M. & Meng, H.-W. & Paul, D. & Li, D. & Kath, S. & Loomis, G. & Nsoesie, E.O. & Wen, M. & Smith, K.R. & Li, F., 2017. "Geotagged US tweets as predictors of county-level health outcomes, 2015-2016," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 107(11), pages 1776-1782.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2017.303993_8
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2017.303993
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    Cited by:

    1. Srikant Devaraj & Marcus T. Wolfe & Pankaj C. Patel, 2021. "Creative destruction and regional health: evidence from the US," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 573-604, April.
    2. Duncan, Dustin T. & Cook, Stephanie H. & Wood, Erica P. & Regan, Seann D. & Chaix, Basile & Tian, Yijun & Chunara, Rumi, 2023. "Structural racism and homophobia evaluated through social media sentiment combined with activity spaces and associations with mental health among young sexual minority men," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).
    3. Nina Cesare & Pallavi Dwivedi & Quynh C. Nguyen & Elaine O. Nsoesie, 2019. "Use of social media, search queries, and demographic data to assess obesity prevalence in the United States," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-9, December.

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