How (Not) to Talk on Twitter: Effects of Politicians' Tweets on Perceptions of the Twitter Environment

“If your institution refuses to provide what you need, create it yourself”: Feminist praxis on #AcademicTwitter

Previous research has demonstrated the impact that Twitter can have for promoting and discussing a feminist agenda. Given the gendered neoliberalism that exists within academia, tweets under the hashtag “#AcademicTwitter” may also be an important space for feminist praxis. Yet, to our knowledge, there is no empirical work analysing the function of “Academic Twitter” from a distinctly feminist perspective. Thus, we asked “How is Academic Twitter used for feminist praxis?”. We conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of 596 tweets containing the hashtag #AcademicTwitter. This generated four themes showing how Academic Twitter can be a valuable site for feminist praxis, by enabling academics to “give testimony to academia”, “access the hidden curriculum”, and engage in both “academic kindness” and “resistance and advocacy”. Despite these benefits, we also observed a tension between Academic Twitter as a site for feminist practice yet also as potentially complicit in promoting the competitiveness and overwork that pervades academia. We recommend that future feminist research interrogates the ways in which more diverse forms of feminist praxis, including more negative experiences, are negotiated on Academic Twitter.

What makes a tweet be retweeted? A Bayesian trigram analysis of tweet propagation during the 2015 Colombian political campaign

This article proposes the use of computationally efficient inverse regression Bayesian method for analysis of tweet propagation of political messages. Our example focuses on the Colombian case, though our method can be used in any election where social media messaging has a direct impact on political outcomes. We find strong evidence that politicians were able to identify the combination of sensitive words to enhance the probability of retweet of the message, which, in turn, had an impact on political outcomes. The contributions of our work entail: (a) an examination of a neglected unit of analysis (trigram) in a language less studied (i.e. Spanish), (b) based on an innovative Bayesian efficient approach and (c) exploiting the predictive power that retweets have on electoral results as an informational diffusion tool in social media. A practical implication of this new methodology is the possibility to adjust political messages as a means to increase voters engagement in political campaigns.

The Importance of 'Likes': The Interplay of Message Framing, Source, and Social Endorsement on Credibility Perceptions of Health Information on Facebook

Online sources not only permeate the information-seeking environment of the younger generation, but also have profound influence in shaping their beliefs and behaviors. In this landscape, examining the factors responsible for credibility perceptions of online information is fundamental, particularly for health-related information. Using a 2 (frames: gain vs. loss) × 2 (source: expert vs. non-expert) × 2 (social endorsement: high vs. low) randomized between-subjects experimental design, this study examines the effect of health message framing and the moderating effects of social endorsement and source type on credibility perceptions of Facebook posts. Testing across two issues--physical activity and alcohol consumption--findings indicate that the gain-framed message was perceived as most credible. Additionally, significant three-way interactions suggest that social endorsement and source type affect the relationship between message framing and credibility perceptions. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that a gain-framed message from an expert source with high number of 'likes' is considered the most credible message. These findings have significant implications for information gathering from social media sources, such as the influence of 'likes' on health information.

Raising Awareness About Cervical Cancer Using Twitter: Content Analysis of the 2015 #SmearForSmear Campaign

Background

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women under 45 years of age. To deal with the decrease of smear test coverage in the United Kingdom, a Twitter campaign called #SmearForSmear has been launched in 2015 for the European Cervical Cancer Prevention Week. Its aim was to encourage women to take a selfie showing their lipstick going over the edge and post it on Twitter with a raising awareness message promoting cervical cancer screening. The estimated audience was 500 million people. Other public health campaigns have been launched on social media such as Movember to encourage participation and self-engagement. Their result was unsatisfactory as their aim had been diluted to become mainly a social buzz.

Objective

The objectives of this study were to identify the tweets delivering a raising awareness message promoting cervical cancer screening (sensitizing tweets) and to understand the characteristics of Twitter users posting about this campaign.

Methods

We conducted a 3-step content analysis of the English tweets tagged #SmearForSmear posted on Twitter for the 2015 European Cervical Cancer Prevention Week. Data were collected using the Twitter application programming interface. Their extraction was based on an analysis grid generated by 2 independent researchers using a thematic analysis, validated by a strong Cohen kappa coefficient. A total of 7 themes were coded for sensitizing tweets and 14 for Twitter users’ status. Verbatims were thematically and then statistically analyzed.

Results

A total of 3019 tweets were collected and 1881 were analyzed. Moreover, 69.96% of tweets had been posted by people living in the United Kingdom. A total of 57.36% of users were women, and sex was unknown in 35.99% of cases. In addition, 54.44% of the users had posted at least one selfie with smeared lipstick. Furthermore, 32.32% of tweets were sensitizing. Independent factors associated with posting sensitizing tweets were women who experienced an abnormal smear test (OR [odds ratio] 13.456, 95% CI 3.101-58.378, P<.001), female gender (OR 3.752, 95% CI 2.133-6.598, P<.001), and people who live in the United Kingdom (OR 2.097, 95% CI 1.447-3.038, P<.001). Nonsensitizing tweets were statistically more posted by a nonhealth or nonmedia company (OR 0.558, 95% CI 0.383-0.814, P<.001).

Conclusions

This study demonstrates that the success of a public health campaign using a social media platform depends on its ability to get its targets involved. It also suggests the need to use social marketing to help its dissemination. The clinical impact of this Twitter campaign to increase cervical cancer screening is yet to be evaluated.