Currently submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 17, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 17, 2025 - Apr 14, 2025
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Examining Stigma of Dementia During World Alzheimer’s Awareness Month: Infodemiology Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Dementia is a significant global health concern. However, public awareness and education about dementia-related stigma remain limited, especially on social media. Examining dementia-related stigma on social media is critical because it impacts how the public perceives people living with dementia. By understanding dementia-related stigma on social media, we can develop educational strategies to target false stereotypes, beliefs, and misinformation to improve the quality of life of people living with dementia.
Objective:
This study examines dementia-related stigma on the X platform (formerly Twitter) during World Alzheimer’s Month, a global advocacy campaign organized by Alzheimer’s Disease International.
Methods:
Posts were scraped from X (formerly Twitter) during the World Alzheimer’s Awareness Month from September 1 - 30, 2022. After filtering the data, 1,981 posts were examined using thematic analysis.
Results:
Drawing on our thematic analysis, we found four themes including: 1) dementia stereotypes; 2) discrimination and denied dignity; 3) devaluing the lives of people with dementia; and 4) countering dementia-related stigma.
Conclusions:
By analyzing how stigma manifests on social media, this study sheds light on the dementia education and information needed to combat false beliefs and dementia-related stigma. Findings from this study may help to inform future awareness campaigns to address dementia-related stigma on social media. Clinical Trial: Not Applicable.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.