Investigating biomedical research literature in the blogosphere: a case study of diabetes and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c)

Gruzd, Anatoliy; Black, Fiona A.; Le, Thi Ngoc Yen; Amos, Kathleen

doi:10.3163/1536-5050.100.1.007

Cited by 17 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Meanwhile, patient blogs are widely read and support the development of networks around them. However, they are less likely to refer to published research, given that research outputs are typically published behind paywalls, and are less well connected to blogs written by doctors (Gruzd et al, 2012a). Wider adoption of SoMe by researchers to communicate health information has the potential to impact on public opinion and to address misinformation, particularly in relation to public health issues (Foulkes, 2011).…”

Section: Disseminationmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…As outlined above, we identifi ed two distinct areas in which research using SoMe as data can be considered based on Moreno et al (2013) (Gruzd et al, 2012a;O ' Connor, 2013;Procter et al, 2010); Altmetrics interpretation (Kwok, 2013) 2013). Research in the interactive domain may involve recruiting subjects via SoMe channels such as Facebook (e.g.…”

Section: Social Media As Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perspectives on social media in and as research: A synthetic review

Lafferty

Manca

2015

International Review of Psychiatry

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With the growth of social media use in both the private and public spheres, researchers are currently exploring the new opportunities and practices offered by these tools in the research lifecycle. This area is still in its infancy: As methodological approaches and methods are being tested - mainly through pragmatic and exploratory approaches - practices are being shaped and negotiated by the actors involved in research. A further element of complexity is added by the ambivalent status of social media within research activities. They can be both a tool - for recruitment, data collection, analysis - and data - as what constitutes the corpus to be analysed - both in an observational and interactive domain. This synthetic analysis of the literature is aimed at identifying how social media are currently being used in research and how they fit into the research lifecycle. We identify and discuss emerging evidence and trends in the adoption of social media in research, which can be used and applied by psychiatry research practitioners as a framework to inform the development of a personalized research network and social media strategy in research.

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Section: Disseminationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Social Media As Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspectives on social media in and as research: A synthetic review

Lafferty

Manca

2015

International Review of Psychiatry

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“…The fluid and changeable nature of the ''blogosphere'' was recognized as a limitation that rendered the research as only a snapshot in time (Cain & Dillon, 2010;Miller & Pole, 2010;Miller et al, 2011), while sampling was seen as constrained by the impracticality of accessing large numbers of blogs and the limitations of the Google Blog # search facility (Gruzd et al, 2012;Ho, 2011). Further limitations to using blogs for research were the reliance on self-reported diagnoses and information that cannot be externally validated (Keim-Malpass et al, 2013;Miller & Pole, 2010;Miller et al, 2011;Ozan-Rafferty et al, 2014), the exclusion of people without access to the Internet (Konovalov et al, 2010;Ozan-Rafferty et al, 2014), the inability to ascertain author authenticity, unreliable assessment of temporality in relation to describing experiences, and search terms retrieving irrelevant media (Konovalov et al, 2010).…”

Section: The Use Of Blogs In Qualitative Health Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The groups included people who were active in the Hearing Voices movements (Woods, 2013); people traveling to Turkey for health care (Ozan-Rafferty, Johnson, Shah, & Kursun, 2014); a United States discussion on a science blog about banning acetaminophen-based painkillers (MacKert et al, 2011); and people blogging about genomics (Middleton et al, 2014), swine flu (Tausczik, Faasse, Pennebaker, & Petrie, 2012), vaccines (Larson et al, 2013), and diabetes (Gruzd, Black, Le, & Amos, 2012).…”

Section: Sampling Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Blogs as a Qualitative Health Research Tool

Wilson

Kenny

Dickson‐Swift

2015

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

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The global increase in and prevalence of social media is stimulating interest in the utilisation of blogs for research purposes. There is, however, a significant lack of information about the manner and scope of blog use in health research. In this scoping review, we aimed to identify how blogs are being used in health research to date and whether blogging has potential as a useful qualitative tool for data collection. Our purpose was to summarize the extent, range, and nature of research activity using blogs. In our scoping review key search terms were developed and applied to selected databases with 44 relevant studies identified. Studies were examined for the inclusion of blog use in their methods and descriptions of the manner in which they were used. While blogs were used in a variety of ways, the majority of identified studies used blogs for data collection, mostly as one method within a set of data collection methods and primarily for gathering information about experiences, perceptions, and feelings. We identified themes related to the blog's function, the health issue or topic focus, and sampling categories. Our review demonstrated that blogs have potential as a qualitative health research tool for a range of purposes, including data collection. Blogs have particular application for researchers accessing populations beyond their physical reach. Given the global commitment to research for improvements to health and health equity, this review is an essential first step to embark on future qualitative health research using blogs. Keywords blogs, health research, qualitative research, qualitative methods, data collectionThis article reports on a scoping review of peer-reviewed literature that describes the use of blogs in health research. As the use of social media becomes commonplace, interest in the utilization of blogs for research is growing. The extent to which blogs are being used as a research tool by health researchers is, however, unclear. Our interest is in understanding how blogs are being used in health research and whether blogging has potential as a useful qualitative tool for data collection. By summarizing the extent, range, and nature of research activity using blogs, our aim is to identify what is known about the use of blogs in qualitative health research. This review is an essential first step from which to embark on future qualitative health research using blogs.

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“…Other social media related studies have focused on hate groups in the blogosphere (Chau & Xu, 2007) and on identifying bloggers with marketing impact (Li, Lai & Chen, 2009). An example of how blogosphere discussions are related to scientific literature was presented by Gruzd, Black, Le and Amos (2012). They used crawling, social network analysis and qualitative content analysis to investigate the relationship between blogosphere discussions and biomedical literature in PubMed on diabetes.…”

Section: Web Miningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Webometrics benefitting from web mining? An investigation of methods and applications of two research fields

Lorentzen

2014

Scientometrics

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Webometrics and web mining are two fields where research is focused on quantitative analyses of the web. This literature review outlines definitions of the fields, and then focuses on their methods and applications. It also discusses the potential of closer contact and collaboration between them. A key difference between the fields is that webometrics has focused on exploratory studies, whereas web mining has been dominated by studies focusing on development of methods and algorithms. Differences in type of data can also be seen, with webometrics more focused on analyses of the structure of the web and web mining more focused on web content and usage, even though both fields have been embracing the possibilities of user generated content. It is concluded that research problems where big data is needed can benefit from collaboration between webometricians, with their tradition of exploratory studies, and web miners, with their tradition of developing methods and algorithms.

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Investigating biomedical research literature in the blogosphere: a case study of diabetes and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c)

Cited by 17 publications

References 25 publications

Perspectives on social media in and as research: A synthetic review

Perspectives on social media in and as research: A synthetic review

Using Blogs as a Qualitative Health Research Tool

Webometrics benefitting from web mining? An investigation of methods and applications of two research fields

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