Using Twitter to Elicit the Patient Perspective

Abstract

Abstract:The social media platform, Twitter, was used to understand the patient perspective on experiences with asthma.A content analysis of 844 tweets was conducted. The sample of tweets was obtained by performing a keyword search over the course of a one week period. The categories for coding were established based on a literature review. The most frequently occurring theme to emerge in the data was general disease state (n=115, 13.7%). The next most frequently found themes included triggers of asthma (n=100, 11.8 %) and general treatment (n=95, 11.2%). Asthma was often discussed in a joking manner and tweets were utilized to share medical information. Results proved that Twitter can serve as a valuable research tool to understand how people communicate about health topics.