Open Access#Crohn’s: Historical Cohort of Twitter Activity
Author(s) -
Márcio Roberto Facanali,
Carolina Bortolozzo Graciolli Facanali,
Natália Sousa Freitas Queiroz,
Carlos Walter Sobrado,
Sérgio Carlos Nahas,
Adriana Vaz SafatleRibeiro
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
crohn's and colitis 360
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2631-827X
DOI - 10.1093/crocol/otaa075
Subject(s) - cohort , medicine
Background Analysis of the Twitter activity on #Crohn’s, identifying individuals with interest in Crohn’s disease on Twitter. Methods A historic cohort study was conducted about Twitter activity evaluation of #Crohn’s analyzed over a period of 9 years. For the Twitter analysis, a health-care social media analytics tool, Symplur Signals, was adopted. Results From 2011 until 2019, 627,000 tweets of #Crohn’s were detected, with 276,380 retweets by 109,937 users; of these users, 32.4% were patient advocates and 12.6% were doctors. There was a pattern of annual peak activity of the #Crohn’s, mainly in May and December, and less activity, usually in July. Of all tweets, 52.5% were categorized as positive and 47.5% as negative. Conclusions Social media, especially Twitter, represents an important information tool, but it is still underutilized by gastroenterologists. This study suggests a significant interference of international awareness campaigns about inflammatory bowel disease in the activity of #Crohn’s on Twitter, denoting an increase in debating this topic on the platform. Discussions on the subject by health professionals are still below expectations regarding the importance of the theme.