Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 1, 2020
Date Accepted: Aug 10, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A Twitter-Based Network Analysis of Brain Tumor Social Media (#BTSM)
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Brain Tumor Social Media (#BTSM) Twitter hashtag was founded in February 2012 as a disease-specific hashtag for brain tumor patients.
Objective:
To understand #BTSM’s role as a patient support system we describe user descriptors, growth, interaction, and content sharing.
Methods:
We analyzed all tweets containing #BTSM from 2012 to 2018 using the Symplur Signals platform to obtain data and to describe Symplur-defined user categories, tweet content, and trends in use over time. We created a network plot with all publicly-available retweets involving #BTSM in 2018 to visualize key stakeholders and their connections to other users.
Results:
From 2012 to 2018, 59764 unique users participated in #BTSM, amassing 298904 tweets. The yearly volume of #BTSM tweets increased by 264% from 2012 to 2018 with #BTSM constantly trending in the top 15 list of disease hashtags, as well the top 15 list of tweet chats. Patient advocates generated the most #BTSM tweets (33.13%) while advocacy groups, caregivers, doctors, and researchers generated 7.01%, 4.63%, 3.86%, and 3.37%, respectively. Physician use, although still low, has increased over time. The 2018 network plot of retweets including #BTSM identifies a number of key stakeholders from the patient advocate, patient organization, and medical researcher domains and reveals the extent of their reach to other users.
Conclusions:
From its start in 2012, #BTSM has grown exponentially over time. We believe its growth suggests its potential as a global source of brain tumor information on Twitter for patients, advocates, patient organizations as well as healthcare professionals and researchers.
Citation
