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Characterizing diabetes, diet, exercise, and obesity comments on Twitter

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  • Karami, Amir
  • Dahl, Alicia A.
  • Turner-McGrievy, Gabrielle
  • Kharrazi, Hadi
  • Shaw, George

Abstract

Social media provide a platform for users to express their opinions and share information. Understanding public health opinions on social media, such as Twitter, offers a unique approach to characterizing common health issues such as diabetes, diet, exercise, and obesity (DDEO); however, collecting and analyzing a large scale conversational public health data set is a challenging research task. The goal of this research is to analyze the characteristics of the general public's opinions in regard to diabetes, diet, exercise and obesity (DDEO) as expressed on Twitter. A multi-component semantic and linguistic framework was developed to collect Twitter data, discover topics of interest about DDEO, and analyze the topics. From the extracted 4.5 million tweets, 8% of tweets discussed diabetes, 23.7% diet, 16.6% exercise, and 51.7% obesity. The strongest correlation among the topics was determined between exercise and obesity (p<.0002). Other notable correlations were: diabetes and obesity (p<.0005), and diet and obesity (p<.001). DDEO terms were also identified as subtopics of each of the DDEO topics. The frequent subtopics discussed along with “Diabetes”, excluding the DDEO terms themselves, were blood pressure, heart attack, yoga, and Alzheimer. The non-DDEO subtopics for “Diet” included vegetarian, pregnancy, celebrities, weight loss, religious, and mental health, while subtopics for “Exercise” included computer games, brain, fitness, and daily plan. Non-DDEO subtopics for “Obesity” included Alzheimer, cancer, and children. With 2.67 billion social media users in 2016, publicly available data such as Twitter posts can be utilized to support clinical providers, public health experts, and social scientists in better understanding common public opinions in regard to diabetes, diet, exercise, and obesity.

Suggested Citation

  • Karami, Amir & Dahl, Alicia A. & Turner-McGrievy, Gabrielle & Kharrazi, Hadi & Shaw, George, 2018. "Characterizing diabetes, diet, exercise, and obesity comments on Twitter," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-6.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ininma:v:38:y:2018:i:1:p:1-6
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.08.002
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Harris, J.K. & Moreland-Russell, S. & Tabak, R.G. & Ruhr, L.R., 2014. "Communication about childhood obesity on twitter," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(7), pages 62-69.
    2. Peter G. Kopelman, 2000. "Obesity as a medical problem," Nature, Nature, vol. 404(6778), pages 635-643, April.
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    1. Grover, Purva & Kar, Arpan Kumar & Davies, Gareth, 2018. "“Technology enabled Health” – Insights from twitter analytics with a socio-technical perspective," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 85-97.
    2. Nisar, Tahir M. & Prabhakar, Guru & Patil, Pushp P., 2018. "Sports clubs’ use of social media to increase spectator interest," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-195.
    3. Theo Lynn & Pierangelo Rosati & Guto Leoni Santos & Patricia Takako Endo, 2020. "Sorting the Healthy Diet Signal from the Social Media Expert Noise: Preliminary Evidence from the Healthy Diet Discourse on Twitter," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(22), pages 1-28, November.
    4. Martínez-Rojas, María & Pardo-Ferreira, María del Carmen & Rubio-Romero, Juan Carlos, 2018. "Twitter as a tool for the management and analysis of emergency situations: A systematic literature review," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 196-208.
    5. Ladislav Pilař & Lucie Kvasničková Stanislavská & Roman Kvasnička, 2021. "Healthy Food on the Twitter Social Network: Vegan, Homemade, and Organic Food," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(7), pages 1-15, April.

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