World Pneumonia Day 2011–2016: Twitter contents and retweets. Issue 4 (24th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Adnan, Md Mohiuddin; Yin, Jingjing; Jackson, Ashley M; Tse, Zion Tsz Ho; Liang, Hai; Fu, King-Wa; Saroha, Nitin; Althouse, Benjamin M; Fung, Isaac Chun-Hai
• Is Part Of: International health. Volume 11:Issue 4(2019)
• Page Start: 297
• Page End: 305
• Publication Date: 2018-11-24
• Subjects: health communication -- health marketing -- machine learning -- manual coding -- social media; World health -- Periodicals; Public health -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; Medical care -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; Medical policy -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; 362.1091724
• DOI: 10.1093/inthealth/ihy087
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1876-3413

Abstract

Abstract: Background: Twitter is used for World Pneumonia Day (WPD; November 12) communication. We evaluate if themes of #pneumonia tweets were associated with retweet frequency. Methods: A total of 28 181 original #pneumonia tweets were retrieved (21 November 2016), from which six subcorpora, 1 mo before and 1 mo after WPD 2011–2016, were extracted (n=6721). Underlying topics were identified via latent Dirichlet allocation and were manually coded into themes. The association of themes with retweet count was assessed via multivariable hurdle regression. Results: Compared with personal experience tweets, tweets that both raised awareness and promoted intervention were 2.62 times as likely to be retweeted (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.62 [95% 1.79 to 3.85]) and if retweeted had 37% more retweets (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] 1.37 [95% CI 1.06 to 1.78]). Tweets that raised concerns about vaccine price were twice as likely to be retweeted (aOR 2.29 [95% CI 1.36 to 3.84]) and if retweeted, had double the retweet count (aPR 2.05 [95% CI 1.27 to 3.29]) of tweets sharing personal experience. Conclusions: The #pneumonia tweets that both raised awareness and promoted interventions and those discussing vaccine price were more likely to engage users than tweets about personal experience. These results help health professionals craft WPD messages that will engage the audience.