Accepted for/Published in: Online Journal of Public Health Informatics
Date Submitted: Oct 10, 2025
Date Accepted: May 12, 2026
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Top Direct-to-Consumer TV Advertising Budgets and Their Pharmaceutical Drug Brand Conversations on Twitter: A Social Media Listening Study
ABSTRACT
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising allots billions annually in the U.S., yet social media discourse of it remains underexamined. This social listening study employs Brandwatch to analyze Twitter conversations (August 2021—August 2023) surrounding top-budgeted DTC brands. A dataset of 44,700 mentions from 26,800 unique authors was analyzed for content, sentiment, and thematic relevance using uses gratifications and agenda-setting frameworks. Four dominant themes emerged: (1) patient experiences/testimonials, (2) drug pricing/insurance concerns, (3) pharmaceutical news, and (4) advertising commentary. Implications surround public policy and industry practice. Suggested future research directions include NodeXL network analysis and qualitative inquiry into user motivations.
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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.