Analysis of Social Media Discussions on (#)Diet by Blue, Red, and Swing States in the U.S.

Amir Karami,Parisa Bozorgi,George Shaw,Gabrielle Turner-Mcgrievy,Hadi Kharrazi,Sruthi Puthan Valappil,Alicia A Dahl

doi:10.3390/healthcare9050518

Abstract

The relationship between political affiliations and diet-related discussions on social media has not been studied on a population level. This study used a cost- and -time effective framework to leverage, aggregate, and analyze data from social media. This paper enhances our understanding of diet-related discussions with respect to political orientations in U.S. states. This mixed methods study used computational methods to collect tweets containing “diet” or “#diet” shared in a year, identified tweets posted by U.S. Twitter users, disclosed topics of tweets, and compared democratic, republican, and swing states based on the weight of topics. A qualitative method was employed to code topics. We found 32 unique topics extracted from more than 800,000 tweets, including a wide range of themes, such as diet types and chronic conditions. Based on the comparative analysis of the topic weights, our results revealed a significant difference between democratic, republican, and swing states. The largest difference was detected between swing and democratic states, and the smallest difference was identified between swing and republican states. Our study provides initial insight on the association of potential political leanings with health (e.g., dietary behaviors). Our results show diet discussions differ depending on the political orientation of the state in which Twitter users reside. Understanding the correlation of dietary preferences based on political orientation can help develop targeted and effective health promotion, communication, and policymaking strategies.

Highlights

Introduction published maps and institutional affilEating is an important social activity and an expression of local cultures and beliefs [1].A poor diet is a significant contributing factor to the leading causes of chronic diseases in the United States [2]
While there is a lack of health research on studying swing states, our work addresses this limitation by investigating diet-related discussions in swing states
To improve monitoring diet patterns in the U.S, this research provides an efficient approach using both computational and qualitative methods to compare democratic, republican, and swing states based on the weight of topics of diet-related discussions on Twitter

Summary

Introduction

Introduction published maps and institutional affilEating is an important social activity and an expression of local cultures and beliefs [1].A poor diet is a significant contributing factor to the leading causes of chronic diseases in the United States [2]. $147 billion is spent on health programs for obesity [3] and more than 70% of U.S adults are overweight or obese [4] Political behavior, such as voting, can be considered a social determinant of health [5,6,7,8,9]. Two large social monitoring studies found that democrats or unaffiliated individuals are more likely to follow a vegan or vegetarian-based diet compared to republicans [11,12]. Another diet and political behavior study found that republicans reported eating more high fat iations

Methods

Results

Conclusion