Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Dermatology
Date Submitted: May 27, 2023
Date Accepted: Aug 22, 2023
Evaluating the global digital impact of Psoriasis Action Month and World Psoriasis Day: A serial-cross sectional study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Psoriasis is one of the most common chronic inflammatory skin disorder affecting at least 100 million people globally that may be underdiagnosed in people of color due to different clinical presentations. Hence, to educate, create awareness, dismiss stereotypic myths, and provide information about timely management, Psoriasis Action Month (formerly, Psoriasis Awareness Month) in August and World Psoriasis Day on 29th October are recognized globally with backing from several international organizations.
Objective:
We evaluated the digital impact of Psoriasis Action Month and World Psoriasis Day by studying trends in total tweets posted, identifying top keywords, understanding collaborations and network analysis, and studying global reach of these awareness initiatives to steer future policy development.
Methods:
In this serial cross-sectional analysis, we used broad search queries to find the total number of tweets posted from 2014 to 2022 targeting psoriasis (search query- psoriasis OR #psoriasis), Psoriasis Action Month from 1-31 August (psoriasis awareness month OR #psoriasisawarenessmonth OR psoriasis month OR #psoriasismonth OR psoriasis action month OR #psoriasisactionmonth OR psoriasis awareness OR #psoriasisawareness) and World Psoriasis Day from 28-30 October annually (world psoriasis day OR #worldpsoriasisday OR psoriasis awareness day OR #psoriasisawarenessday OR psoriasis day OR #psoriasisday OR psoriasis awareness OR #psoriasisawareness). Social network analysis was done to contextualise the tweets and study the top associated hashtags and keywords using Socioviz. Network analysis was studied in ForceAtlas2 configuration and each entity was depicted as a node with size set proportional to its magnitude. Beyond social media, we studied the google trends web search analysis for interest by region for the last five years for Psoriasis Action Month and World Psoriasis Day.
Results:
A total of 3,384 and 1,925 respective tweets were identified in 2022 related to Psoriasis Action Month and World Psoriasis Day during their specified time periods that showed a change of +67.68% and -15.75% when compared to total respective tweets in 2021. More users have tweeted about World Psoriasis Day than the Psoriasis Action Month during 2019-2021. The collaboration proportion amongst the top 100 influencers was 42%. On Google Trends analysis, the majority of the users were from American, European, Russian, South-Asian, and Australian regions with limited involvement from various African and Central-Asian countries.
Conclusions:
The digital reach of psoriasis awareness is limited. The limited presence of psoriasis-related content on social media platforms highlights a missed opportunity to effectively engage a wider audience, disseminate accurate information about psoriasis and reduce its stigmatization. Digital platforms have the potential to provide broad access to accurate information, encourage user engagement, and contribute to increased knowledge and management of psoriasis on a worldwide level following appropriate policy development and involvement from concerned stakeholders.
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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.