The Role of Twitter in Raising Users' Awareness in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Computer and Information Technology Engineering, Payame Noor University (PNU), Tehran, IRAN

2 Department of Computer and Information Technology Engineering, Payame Noor University (PNU), Tehran, IRAN;

Abstract

Heart disease has emerged as the foremost global cause of mortality. Enhancing awareness and understanding of this disease, along with preventive strategies, is pivotal in averting its onset and diminishing mortality rates. Today, social networks have evolved into paramount information dissemination platforms owing to their user-friendly nature and widespread adoption. Among these, Twitter stands out as a prominent source of rich data that can be leveraged for educational and awareness purposes. While existing studies have evaluated the impact of social media on increasing health-related knowledge, there is a gap in research regarding the role of Twitter in increasing cardiovascular disease awareness and prevention from different perspectives. This study employs a cross-sectional and descriptive methodology to quantitatively analyze over 50026 tweets.  This study seeks to investigate how Twitter users seek and disseminate information related to cardiovascular diseases. It aims to identify the prevalent topics shared about cardiovascular diseases and analyze the content of these messages.  Initially, 50026 tweets from 8,619 users were gathered over a one-month timeframe. English tweets have been selected due to the prevalence of the English language. Subsequently, the tweets were categorized and analyzed utilizing the LDA technique and the MALLET platform. Content analysis was conducted across various categories, focusing on topics, temporal trends, and geographical locations of the tweets. The results show that there was a significant relationship between the parameters extracted in the research and the most concern of users was in the field of heart diseases and prevention methods. Most user tweets (36,323 or 72.60%) contained specific information about heart disease. 9.33% related to cardiovascular issues, 2817 (5.63%) tweets were about heart attack, 2949 (5.89%) were about heart failure and 3267 (6.5%) about other cases related to heart disorders (cardiac arrest, cardiomyopathy, ischemic heart, etc.). The most concern of users in the group of heart diseases was related to the connection of topics such as cholesterol (4102 tweets (11.04%)), prevention (20348 tweets (56.01%)) and diet (1114 (3.06%)) with heart disease.

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Main Subjects

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International Journal of Web Research
Volume 6, Issue 2
December 2023
Pages 107-117

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