Health Twitter: An Exploration of Everyday Conversations about Health
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Abstract
Background: Twitter is a popular micro-blogging site that allows users to disseminate information in 140 characters of text or less. The appeal of Twitter is derived in part from its ability to relay breaking news and trending topics to a diverse audience. Twitter technology supports a globally based online social network and is becoming a widely accepted channel of information transmission. Recent world events (i.e., U.S. presidential election, H1N1 outbreak) has demonstrated the utility of this technology in broadcasting information instantaneously within local and global networks. Yet, there has been little inquiry into how health is conceptualized and enacted within and amongst Twitter users.
Purpose: To explore ‘health’ conversations of participants within the Twitter online social network.
Methods: A directed content analysis guided by the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) Determinant of Health (DOH) framework was completed. One hundred tweets from the end of each hour of one day (24 hours) were captured using ‘The Archivist’ (www.flotzam.com/archivist/) data collection software. Tweets (N = 2400) were collected on 19 June 2009 containing the word ‘health’ (or part of a URL or hashtag); Tweets that did not correspond to the DOH framework were coded as Other or Advertising. A collection of Canadian, U.S., and world news headlines were gathered from aggregated Internet news feeds for the month prior to 19 June 2009 in order to provide the socio-political context for this study.
Results: Predominant health care themes within this 24 hour period included Health Services (n = 669, 27.9%), Personal Health Practices (PHP) (n = 252, 10.5%), and health Education issues (n = 131, 5.5%). Tweeters in the PHP and Education domains shared advice and provided URL links to information, resources, and treatment aids they found useful in the maintenance of their own health. Themes from the Health Services domain reflected polarized commentaries regarding the 2009 proposed health system reform within the United States. Collectively, the remaining nine DOH themes accounted for 8.2% of the sampled tweets (n = 196). The Other (n= 237) and Advertising (n =176) themes accounted for the remainder of the coded tweets (9.9% and 7.3%, respectively). Tweets (n = 739, 30.8%) including the term health but with an inapt context were excluded.
Conclusions: Results of this study reflected health issues of personal relevance to the ‘everyday lives’ of socially networked Twitter subscribers. This study also highlighted the evolving dynamic behind the conceptualization of health and how it is co-constructed through news media, advertising, and social network technology with important ramifications for health care practice and policy.
Purpose: To explore ‘health’ conversations of participants within the Twitter online social network.
Methods: A directed content analysis guided by the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) Determinant of Health (DOH) framework was completed. One hundred tweets from the end of each hour of one day (24 hours) were captured using ‘The Archivist’ (www.flotzam.com/archivist/) data collection software. Tweets (N = 2400) were collected on 19 June 2009 containing the word ‘health’ (or part of a URL or hashtag); Tweets that did not correspond to the DOH framework were coded as Other or Advertising. A collection of Canadian, U.S., and world news headlines were gathered from aggregated Internet news feeds for the month prior to 19 June 2009 in order to provide the socio-political context for this study.
Results: Predominant health care themes within this 24 hour period included Health Services (n = 669, 27.9%), Personal Health Practices (PHP) (n = 252, 10.5%), and health Education issues (n = 131, 5.5%). Tweeters in the PHP and Education domains shared advice and provided URL links to information, resources, and treatment aids they found useful in the maintenance of their own health. Themes from the Health Services domain reflected polarized commentaries regarding the 2009 proposed health system reform within the United States. Collectively, the remaining nine DOH themes accounted for 8.2% of the sampled tweets (n = 196). The Other (n= 237) and Advertising (n =176) themes accounted for the remainder of the coded tweets (9.9% and 7.3%, respectively). Tweets (n = 739, 30.8%) including the term health but with an inapt context were excluded.
Conclusions: Results of this study reflected health issues of personal relevance to the ‘everyday lives’ of socially networked Twitter subscribers. This study also highlighted the evolving dynamic behind the conceptualization of health and how it is co-constructed through news media, advertising, and social network technology with important ramifications for health care practice and policy.
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