ADHD in 140 Characters or Less: an Analysis of Twitter Commentary on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Saudi Arabia

Rabab S Alharbi

doi:10.13189/ujer.2017.051208

Abstract

Internet-based social networks such as Twitter are rapidly gaining popularity among Saudis, and an increasing number of them are using the internet to source information about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The Saudi ADHD Society (known in English as the AFTA Society) is the only charity serving people with ADHD in Saudi Arabia. This article examines the representations of ADHD by AFTA Society members on Twitter, because they have come to define how ADHD is talked about in Saudi Arabia. The AFTA Society Twitter account (@adhdarabia) has over 13,500 followers. Tweets posted between December 1st, 2016 and January 31st, 2017 were collected, with those announcing AFTA events and retweets from other accounts eliminated. This resulted in 141 tweets discussing the nature, causation, and treatment of ADHD. These tweets were analyzed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. Findings reveal that AFTA Society tweets construct ADHD as an experience of suffering, and position children with ADHD as sufferers, often subject to additional problems. An alternative discursive construction of ADHD is that caring for a child with ADHD is a 'different' kind of responsibility for parents and teachers, who must be advised by 'experts'. The implications of these discourses are discussed in this paper.

Highlights

Internet-based social networks such as Twitter are rapidly gaining popularity among Saudis (Easton [26], 2013) and an increasing number of Saudis are using the internet to source information about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Alharbi [5], 2017)
This study examined children’s psychological problems in general, it highlighted the prevalence of ADHD within this population, which represented 12.6% of patients (Abdur-Rahim et al [1], 1996)
This article examines the representations of ADHD by AFTA Society members on Twitter within Saudi Arabia

Summary

Introduction

Internet-based social networks such as Twitter are rapidly gaining popularity among Saudis (Easton [26], 2013) and an increasing number of Saudis are using the internet to source information about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Alharbi [5], 2017). As of June 30, 2016, 10 years after Twitter launched, the number of users had grown exponentially, reaching 313 million per month globally (see https://about.twitter.com/company accessed May 16, 2017). Of the 58% of the Saudi population who use the internet (Kemp [44], 2015), 81% have a Twitter account (Global Digital Statistics [34], 2015). Saudi Arabia, with a population of 32 million, has the fastest growing number of Twitter users in the world (Easton [26], 2013). Twitter offers researchers access to raw, real-time data (Kealey [43], 2012), and has been called “electronic word of mouth” (Jansen et al [40], 2009). The fact that real-time discourse is ‘searchable’ through Twitter, in a way and to an extent that is novel in history (Zappavigna [79], 2011), has made Twitter a fertile medium for academic research. McNeill and Briggs [53] (2014) conclude that “Twitter can be a powerful tool for the dissemination and discussion of public health information” (p. 673)

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Conclusion