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

Ziqi Zhang () and Wasim Ahmed
Additional contact information
Ziqi Zhang: University of Sheffield
Wasim Ahmed: Northumbria University

International Journal of Public Health, 2019, vol. 64, issue 3, No 15, 440 pages

Abstract: Abstract Objectives To compare information sharing of over 379 health conditions on Twitter to uncover trends and patterns of online user activities. Methods We 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. Results We 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. Conclusions Our 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.

Keywords: Public health; Health conditions; Social media; Twitter; Network analysis; Data science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00038-018-1192-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijphth:v:64:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s00038-018-1192-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/00038

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-018-1192-5

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Thomas Kohlmann, Nino Künzli and Andrea Madarasova Geckova

More articles in International Journal of Public Health from Springer, Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().