@article{Beguerisse-Diaz:2017:10.1177/2055207616688841,
author = {Beguerisse-Diaz, M and McLennan, AK and Garduño-Hernández, G and Barahona, M and Ulijaszek, SJ},
doi = {10.1177/2055207616688841},
journal = {Digital Health},
pages = {1--29},
title = {The 'who' and 'what' of #diabetes on Twitter},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2055207616688841},
volume = {3},
year = {2017}
}

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TY  - JOUR
AB  - Social media are being increasingly used for health promotion, yet thelandscape of users, messages and interactions in such fora is poorlyunderstood. Studies of social media and diabetes have focused mostly onpatients, or public agencies addressing it, but have not looked broadly at allthe participants or the diversity of content they contribute. We study Twitterconversations about diabetes through the systematic analysis of 2.5 milliontweets collected over 8 months and the interactions between their authors. Weaddress three questions: (1) what themes arise in these tweets?; (2) who arethe most influential users?; (3) which type of users contribute to whichthemes? We answer these questions using a mixed-methods approach, integratingtechniques from anthropology, network science and information retrieval such asthematic coding, temporal network analysis, and community and topic detection.Diabetes-related tweets fall within broad thematic groups: health information,news, social interaction, and commercial. At the same time, humorous messagesand references to popular culture appear consistently, more than any other typeof tweet. We classify authors according to their temporal 'hub' and 'authority'scores. Whereas the hub landscape is diffuse and fluid over time, topauthorities are highly persistent across time and comprise bloggers, advocacygroups and NGOs related to diabetes, as well as for-profit entities withoutspecific diabetes expertise. Top authorities fall into seven interestcommunities as derived from their Twitter follower network. Our findings haveimplications for public health professionals and policy makers who seek to usesocial media as an engagement tool and to inform policy design.
AU  - Beguerisse-Diaz,M
AU  - McLennan,AK
AU  - Garduño-Hernández,G
AU  - Barahona,M
AU  - Ulijaszek,SJ
DO  - 10.1177/2055207616688841
EP  - 29
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 2055-2076
SP  - 1
TI  - The 'who' and 'what' of #diabetes on Twitter
T2  - Digital Health
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2055207616688841
UR  - http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05764
UR  - http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2055207616688841
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/44852
VL  - 3
ER  - 

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