An Examination of Twitter Data to Identify Risky Sexual Practices Among Youth and Young Adults in Botswana.

Judith Cornelius,Ryan Wesslen,Anna Kennedy

doi:10.3390/ijerph16040656

Abstract

Botswana has the third highest rate of HIV infection, as well as one of the highest mobile phone density rates in the world. The rate of mobile cell phone adoption has increased three-fold over the past 10 years. Due to HIV infection rates, youth and young adults are the primary target for prevention efforts. One way to improve prevention efforts is to examine how risk reduction messages are disseminated on social media platforms such as Twitter. Thus, to identify key words related to safer sex practices and HIV prevention, we examined three months of Twitter data in Botswana. 1 December 2015, was our kick off date, and we ended data collection on 29 February 2016. To gather the tweets, we searched for HIV-related terms in English and in Setswana. From the 140,240 tweets collected from 251 unique users, 576 contained HIV-related terms. A representative sample of 25 active Twitter users comprised individuals, one government site and 2 organizations. Data revealed that tweets related to HIV prevention and AIDS did not occur more frequently during the month of December when compared to January and February (t = 3.62, p > 0.05). There was no significant difference between the numbers of HIV related tweets that occurred from 1 December 2015 to 29 February 2016 (F = 32.1, p > 0.05). The tweets occurred primarily during the morning and evening hours and on Tuesdays followed by Thursdays and Fridays. The least number of tweets occurred on Sunday. The highest number of followers was associated with the Botswana government Twitter site. Twitter analytics was found to be useful in providing insight into information being tweeted regarding risky sexual behaviors.

Highlights

Rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are high in Botswana, and the HIV infection rate is the third highest in the world [1]
The Republic of Botswana Ministry of Basic Education reported that Botswana youth and young adults (15 to 24 years of age) are aware of STIs, but gaps exist in knowledge relevant to modes of transmission [2,3]
Specific to HIV awareness, we found three studies [13,14,15] that examined the effect of using social media to increase HIV awareness among men who have sex with men (MSM); two studies used social media to increase HIV care linkage, retention, and health outcomes [13,14]; and another study that used social media to increase HIV

Summary

Introduction

Rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are high in Botswana, and the HIV infection rate is the third highest in the world [1]. The Republic of Botswana Ministry of Basic Education reported that Botswana youth and young adults (15 to 24 years of age) are aware of STIs, but gaps exist in knowledge relevant to modes of transmission [2,3]. Botswana has one of the world’s highest mobile cell phone density rates, exceeding that of many industrialized countries like the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, with 144 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people for an estimated 99% of the Botswana population [4]. Botswana youth and young adults have access to social networking sites and many use Twitter, Facebook, and Whatsapp [5].

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