Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Sep 2, 2022
Date Accepted: Apr 23, 2023
Understanding the consumption of antimicrobial resistance related content on Social Media: Twitter Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most pressing concerns for our society. Today, social media can function as an important channel to disseminate information about AMR. The way in which this information is engaged with depends on a number of factors including the target audience and the content of the social media post.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to better understand how AMR related content is consumed on the social media platform Twitter. This is essential to designing effective public health strategies and raising awareness on antimicrobial stewardship.
Methods:
We take advantage of unrestricted access to the metrics associated with the Twitter bot @AntibioticResis which has over 13,500 followers. Using zero-inflated negative binomial regression models, we measure the impact of pathogen names in paper titles, academic attention inferred from publication counts, and general attention estimated from Twitter on URL clicks to AMR research papers.
Results:
Followers of @AntibioticResis consist primarily of healthcare professionals and academic researchers whose interests are mainly antimicrobial resistance, infectious diseases, microbiology, and public health. Three WHO critical priority pathogens – Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae are positively associated with URL clicks. Papers having a shorter title tend to have more engagements and key words in a paper title can significantly impact engagement.
Conclusions:
Our finding suggests that specific pathogens gain more attention on Twitter than others and that the levels of attention do not necessarily correspond to their status on the WHO priority pathogen list. This suggests that more targeted public health strategies may be needed to raise awareness about AMR among specific pathogens. Analysis of follower data suggests that in the busy schedule of healthcare professionals, social media offers a fast and accessible gateway to stay abreast of the latest developments in this field.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.