Can You Hear Me Now? Social Listening as a Strategy for Understanding User Needs

Abstract

Background: Nocturnal symptoms in Parkinson's disease and their related burdens on patients are often treated after management of daytime manifestations. In order to better understand the unmet needs of nocturnal symptoms management, we sought to analyze the characteristics of nocturnal symptoms and their associated burden from patients' perspectives in 2016 to 2018 and explore whether there were any changes in participants' needs over time across 3 years. Overall symptoms (occurring at day or night) were collected to contrast and compare whether the unmet healthcare needs related to nocturnal symptoms and to overall symptoms are different. Methods: We used a contemporary Social Listening big-data technique to analyze large amounts of Parkinson's disease symptoms in patient-doctor and patient-patient dialogues available from social media platforms in 2016 to 2018 in China. These symptoms were classi ed as either overall symptoms or nocturnal symptoms. We used share of voice (SOV) of symptoms as a proportion of total dialogues per year to re ect the characteristics of symptoms from patients' perspectives. Negative sentiment score of symptoms was analyzed to nd out their related burden on patients. Results: We found that SOV for overall motor symptoms was 79% and had not increased between 2016 and 2018 (79%, p = 0.5), but SOV for non-motor symptoms (69% in 2018) had grown by 7% in 2018 (p < 0.01). SOV for motor complications was 9%, and had increased by 6% (p < 0.01) by 2018. The SOV of motor symptoms was signi cantly larger than non-motor symptoms and motor complications (p < 0.01) in each year. The SOV of non-motor symptoms was larger than that of motor complication (p < 0.01). For nocturnal symptoms, 45% of the analyzed PD population reported nocturnal symptoms in 2018, growing by 6% from 2016 (p < 0.01). SOV for nocturnal-occurring motor symptoms was higher than most nonmotor symptoms (except insomnia). However, non-motor symptoms had the higher increases in SOV. Non-motor symptoms evoked higher negative sentiment regardless of whether they occurred during the day or night. For symptoms that can occur at either day or night, each nocturnal symptom was rated with a higher negative sentiment score than the same symptom during the day, regardless of the type of symptom. Conclusions: The growing share of voice and the greater negative sentiment of nocturnal symptoms from patients' perspectives suggest that management of nocturnal symptoms is an unmet need of patients with Parkinson's disease. A greater emphasis on detecting nocturnal symptoms and treating them with 24-hour care is encouraged. Background Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most common movement disorder of the central nervous system [1]. It is estimated that PD affects 1-2% of the population above 65 years of age worldwide [2]. In China, the overall prevalence has been estimated at 190 per 100,000 individuals, with an overall incidence of 362 per 100,000 person years [3]. PD is characterized by both motor and non-motor system manifestations. Motor sympto...

An integrated social media communication view on content marketing by South African non-profit sectors

“…This underlines the value of customer intelligence through which a holistic view can be developed. Listening could reveal the type of platforms where customers gather, the type of content they prefer and opportunities to influence discussions about the organisation (Pomputius 2019).…”

“…This supports the notion of pulling that is typical of content marketing and SMC. Moreover, a listening approach could afford opportunities to participate in conversation that could equally prove to stakeholders that they are valuable to the organisation (Pomputius 2019). Organisations should realise that interactions on social media, such as conversations or sharing other types of content, will subsequently intensify discussions about the organisation, otherwise referred to as eWOM (Swart 2018:33, 34).…”

“…Specific reasons have been mentioned earlier (cf. Pomputius 2019). Although the benefit of information distribution was widely acknowledged during the interviews, there was recognition of the need for dialogue and the effect thereof on awareness of the corporate brand.…”

Social Listening – Revealing Parkinson’s Disease over Day and Night

“…In recent years, the examination of social media data to better understand a population has become possible through a technique called Social Listening (SL), in which publicly available information can be investigated to determine what topics are being discussed and what attitudes the contributing population holds towards the subjects of discussion [14]. Aside from creating a large dataset, which strengthens the conclusions that can be drawn from the data, SL has the advantage of collecting data from outlets which patients use voluntarily, and it imposes no additional burden to patients as surveys or other studies might.…”

Social Listening – Revealing Parkinson’s Disease over Day and Night

“…In recent years, the examination of social media data to better understand a population has become possible through a technique called Social Listening (SL), in which publicly available information can be investigated to determine what topics are being discussed and what attitudes the contributing population holds towards the subjects of discussion [14]. Aside from creating a large dataset, which strengthens the conclusions that can be drawn from the data, SL had the further advantage of collecting data from outlets which patients use voluntarily and imposes no additional burden to patients as might surveys or other studies.…”