How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises
BackgroundTwitter has emerged as a novel way for physicians to share ideas and advocate for policy change. #ThisIsOurLane (firearm injury) and #GetUsPPE (COVID-19) are examples of nationwide health care–led Twitter campaigns that went viral. Health care–initiated Twitter hash...
Main Authors: | , , , , |
---|---|
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
JMIR Publications
2021-01-01
|
Series: | JMIR Public Health and Surveillance |
Online Access: | https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/1/e24562 |
id |
doaj-1071725d9591475683a0462d8d9e105d |
---|---|
record_format |
Article |
spelling |
doaj-1071725d9591475683a0462d8d9e105d2021-05-02T19:40:53ZengJMIR PublicationsJMIR Public Health and Surveillance2369-29602021-01-0171e2456210.2196/24562How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health CrisesOjo, AyotomiwaGuntuku, Sharath ChandraZheng, MargaretBeidas, Rinad SRanney, Megan L BackgroundTwitter has emerged as a novel way for physicians to share ideas and advocate for policy change. #ThisIsOurLane (firearm injury) and #GetUsPPE (COVID-19) are examples of nationwide health care–led Twitter campaigns that went viral. Health care–initiated Twitter hashtags regarding major public health topics have gained national attention, but their content has not been systematically examined. ObjectiveWe hypothesized that Twitter discourse on two epidemics (firearm injury and COVID-19) would differ between tweets with health care–initiated hashtags (#ThisIsOurLane and #GetUsPPE) versus those with non–health care–initiated hashtags (#GunViolence and #COVID19). MethodsUsing natural language processing, we compared content, affect, and authorship of a random 1% of tweets using #ThisIsOurLane (Nov 2018-Oct 2019) and #GetUsPPE (March-May 2020), compared to #GunViolence and #COVID19 tweets, respectively. We extracted the relative frequency of single words and phrases and created two sets of features: (1) an open-vocabulary feature set to create 50 data-driven–determined word clusters to evaluate the content of tweets; and (2) a closed-vocabulary feature for psycholinguistic categorization among case and comparator tweets. In accordance with conventional linguistic analysis, we used a P<.001, after adjusting for multiple comparisons using the Bonferroni correction, to identify potentially meaningful correlations between language features and outcomes. ResultsIn total, 67% (n=4828) of #ThisIsOurLane tweets and 36.6% (n=7907) of #GetUsPPE tweets were authored by health care professionals, compared to 16% (n=1152) of #GunViolence and 9.8% (n=2117) of #COVID19 tweets. Tweets using #ThisIsOurLane and #GetUsPPE were more likely to contain health care–specific language; more language denoting positive emotions, affiliation, and group identity; and more action-oriented content compared to tweets with #GunViolence or #COVID19, respectively. ConclusionsTweets with health care–led hashtags expressed more positivity and more action-oriented language than the comparison hashtags. As social media is increasingly used for news discourse, public education, and grassroots organizing, the public health community can take advantage of social media’s broad reach to amplify truthful, actionable messages around public health issues.https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/1/e24562 |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Ojo, Ayotomiwa Guntuku, Sharath Chandra Zheng, Margaret Beidas, Rinad S Ranney, Megan L |
spellingShingle |
Ojo, Ayotomiwa Guntuku, Sharath Chandra Zheng, Margaret Beidas, Rinad S Ranney, Megan L How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises JMIR Public Health and Surveillance |
author_facet |
Ojo, Ayotomiwa Guntuku, Sharath Chandra Zheng, Margaret Beidas, Rinad S Ranney, Megan L |
author_sort |
Ojo, Ayotomiwa |
title |
How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises |
title_short |
How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises |
title_full |
How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises |
title_fullStr |
How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises |
title_full_unstemmed |
How Health Care Workers Wield Influence Through Twitter Hashtags: Retrospective Cross-sectional Study of the Gun Violence and COVID-19 Public Health Crises |
title_sort |
how health care workers wield influence through twitter hashtags: retrospective cross-sectional study of the gun violence and covid-19 public health crises |
publisher |
JMIR Publications |
series |
JMIR Public Health and Surveillance |
issn |
2369-2960 |
publishDate |
2021-01-01 |
description |
BackgroundTwitter has emerged as a novel way for physicians to share ideas and advocate for policy change. #ThisIsOurLane (firearm injury) and #GetUsPPE (COVID-19) are examples of nationwide health care–led Twitter campaigns that went viral. Health care–initiated Twitter hashtags regarding major public health topics have gained national attention, but their content has not been systematically examined.
ObjectiveWe hypothesized that Twitter discourse on two epidemics (firearm injury and COVID-19) would differ between tweets with health care–initiated hashtags (#ThisIsOurLane and #GetUsPPE) versus those with non–health care–initiated hashtags (#GunViolence and #COVID19).
MethodsUsing natural language processing, we compared content, affect, and authorship of a random 1% of tweets using #ThisIsOurLane (Nov 2018-Oct 2019) and #GetUsPPE (March-May 2020), compared to #GunViolence and #COVID19 tweets, respectively. We extracted the relative frequency of single words and phrases and created two sets of features: (1) an open-vocabulary feature set to create 50 data-driven–determined word clusters to evaluate the content of tweets; and (2) a closed-vocabulary feature for psycholinguistic categorization among case and comparator tweets. In accordance with conventional linguistic analysis, we used a P<.001, after adjusting for multiple comparisons using the Bonferroni correction, to identify potentially meaningful correlations between language features and outcomes.
ResultsIn total, 67% (n=4828) of #ThisIsOurLane tweets and 36.6% (n=7907) of #GetUsPPE tweets were authored by health care professionals, compared to 16% (n=1152) of #GunViolence and 9.8% (n=2117) of #COVID19 tweets. Tweets using #ThisIsOurLane and #GetUsPPE were more likely to contain health care–specific language; more language denoting positive emotions, affiliation, and group identity; and more action-oriented content compared to tweets with #GunViolence or #COVID19, respectively.
ConclusionsTweets with health care–led hashtags expressed more positivity and more action-oriented language than the comparison hashtags. As social media is increasingly used for news discourse, public education, and grassroots organizing, the public health community can take advantage of social media’s broad reach to amplify truthful, actionable messages around public health issues. |
url |
https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/1/e24562 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT ojoayotomiwa howhealthcareworkerswieldinfluencethroughtwitterhashtagsretrospectivecrosssectionalstudyofthegunviolenceandcovid19publichealthcrises AT guntukusharathchandra howhealthcareworkerswieldinfluencethroughtwitterhashtagsretrospectivecrosssectionalstudyofthegunviolenceandcovid19publichealthcrises AT zhengmargaret howhealthcareworkerswieldinfluencethroughtwitterhashtagsretrospectivecrosssectionalstudyofthegunviolenceandcovid19publichealthcrises AT beidasrinads howhealthcareworkerswieldinfluencethroughtwitterhashtagsretrospectivecrosssectionalstudyofthegunviolenceandcovid19publichealthcrises AT ranneymeganl howhealthcareworkerswieldinfluencethroughtwitterhashtagsretrospectivecrosssectionalstudyofthegunviolenceandcovid19publichealthcrises |
_version_ |
1721487977959391232 |