Abstract
BackgroundAn increasing number of patients from diverse demographic groups share and search for health-related information on Web-based social media. However, little is known about the content of the posted information with respect to the users’ demographics.ObjectiveThe aims of this study were to analyze the content of Web-based health-related social media based on users’ demographics to identify which health topics are discussed in which social media by which demographic groups and to help guide educational and research activities.MethodsWe analyze 3 different types of health-related social media: (1) general Web-based social networks Twitter and Google+; (2) drug review websites; and (3) health Web forums, with a total of about 6 million users and 20 million posts. We analyzed the content of these posts based on the demographic group of their authors, in terms of sentiment and emotion, top distinctive terms, and top medical concepts.ResultsThe results of this study are: (1) Pregnancy is the dominant topic for female users in drug review websites and health Web forums, whereas for male users, it is cardiac problems, HIV, and back pain, but this is not the case for Twitter; (2) younger users (0-17 years) mainly talk about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression-related drugs, users aged 35-44 years discuss about multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs, and middle-aged users (45-64 years) talk about alcohol and smoking; (3) users from the Northeast United States talk about physical disorders, whereas users from the West United States talk about mental disorders and addictive behaviors; (4) Users with higher writing level express less anger in their posts.ConclusionWe studied the popular topics and the sentiment based on users' demographics in Web-based health-related social media. Our results provide valuable information, which can help create targeted and effective educational campaigns and guide experts to reach the right users on Web-based social chatter.
Highlights
As Web-based social media are growing in popularity, the number of people who share their experiences or ask for support in health-related social media has increased [1]
We studied the popular topics and the sentiment based on users' demographics in Web-based health-related social media
Some demographic attribute values are not reported owing to small number of users (age group (0-17) and (65+) in Google+Health), or demographic attribute is not reported by the source, or because users talk about unrelated health topics (writing level (0-5) in TwitterHealth talk about astrology), or the relative difference (Equation 2) for the top findings is less than 0.1
Summary
As Web-based social media are growing in popularity, the number of people who share their experiences or ask for support in health-related social media has increased [1]. One of the key benefits of health-related Web-based social media reported by researchers is the increased access to information to various demographic groups, regardless of age, education, income, or location [4]. Previous work does not reveal granular information on what disorders or other health topics are mostly discussed in the Internet by each demographic group, which would allow health care providers to create targeted and effective educational campaigns. An increasing number of patients from diverse demographic groups share and search for health-related information on Web-based social media. Little is known about the content of the posted information with respect to the users’ demographics
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