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Neely S, Hao F. Diagnosis Disclosure and Peer-to-Peer Information Seeking Among COVID-19-Infected Social Media Users: Survey of US-Based Adults. JMIR Form Res 2023; 7:e48581. [PMID: 37669087 PMCID: PMC10509733 DOI: 10.2196/48581] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2023] [Revised: 06/04/2023] [Accepted: 07/28/2023] [Indexed: 09/06/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Research examining online health communities suggests that individuals affected by chronic health conditions can obtain valuable information and social support through participation in peer-to-peer web-based information exchanges, including information sharing and seeking behaviors. The risks and rewards of these same behaviors in the case of acute illnesses, such as COVID-19, are less well understood, though there is reason to believe that individuals with COVID-19 and other acute illnesses may accrue similar benefits. OBJECTIVE This study examines the propensity of American adults to disclose and discuss their COVID-19 diagnosis and symptoms on social media while actively infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as to engage in peer-to-peer information seeking in order to better understand the illness that they are experiencing. Additionally, this study seeks to identify the motivations for these behaviors as well as their subsequent impacts on perceived social connectedness and health anxiety in patients with COVID-19. METHODS We conducted a representative survey of 2500 US-based adults using a sample purchased through an industry-leading market research provider. Participants were selected through a stratified quota sampling approach to ensure a representative sample of the US population. Balanced quotas were determined (by region of the country) for gender, age, race, ethnicity, and political affiliation. Responses were analyzed from 946 participants who reported having an active social media account and testing positive for COVID-19 at least once since the start of the pandemic. RESULTS The results show that only a small portion of social media users (166/946, 18%) chose to disclose and discuss their COVID-19 diagnosis while infected with the virus. However, among those who did, an overwhelming majority (206/251, 82%) said that doing so helped them feel more connected and supported while infected with the virus. A larger percentage of the 946 respondents (n=319, 34%) engaged in peer-to-peer information seeking while infected with COVID-19. Among those who did, a large majority (301/319, 94%) said that doing so was "helpful," but more than one-third (115/319, 36%) said that reading about other people's experiences made them "more worried" about having COVID-19, while 33% (108/319) said that it made them "less worried." Illness severity and political affiliation were significant predictors of both information sharing and seeking. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that the benefits (and risks) associated with online health communities are germane to patients with acute illnesses such as COVID-19. It is recommended that public health officials and health care providers take a proactive approach to cultivating professionally moderated forums supporting peer-to-peer engagement during future outbreaks of COVID-19 and other acute illnesses in order to improve patient outcomes and promote social support and connectedness among infected patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephen Neely
- School of Public Affairs, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States
| | - Feng Hao
- Department of Sociology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States
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Luo Y, Feng X, Wang D, Zheng M, Reinhardt JD. Understanding early experiences of Chinese frontline nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic: A text mining and thematic analysis of social media information. Nurs Health Sci 2023; 25:389-401. [PMID: 37503817 DOI: 10.1111/nhs.13037] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/06/2023] [Revised: 05/29/2023] [Accepted: 06/25/2023] [Indexed: 07/29/2023]
Abstract
This study aims to explore the early experiences of frontline nurses at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in China as expressed through social media posts. This study used an explanatory sequential mixed-method design. Text mining was used for sentiment analysis. The chi-square test was used to compare the differences in the composition ratio of sentiment classification of posts in different months. Word frequency was statistically analyzed. Further thematic analysis was also performed. The primary sentiments of the posts were discovered to be positive and neutral. The number of posts containing positive emotions was the lowest in January, peaked in March, and gradually declined in April 2020. The following nurse-oriented narrative themes were developed: "To see and be seen," "Moving forward amid adversity and support," and "Returning to everyday life and constructing meaning." The sentiments of Chinese nurses in response to the pandemic fluctuated, with positive emotions in the early stage, but it could not be sustained. This study recommends nurses could be encouraged to engage in expressive writing while adhering to ethical guidelines.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yunting Luo
- Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
- Center of Infectious Diseases, West China Hospital, Sichuan University/West China School of Nursing, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
- Department of Nursing, West China Hospital, Sichuan University/West China School of Nursing, Sichuan University, Nursing Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
| | - Xianqiong Feng
- Department of Nursing, West China Hospital, Sichuan University/West China School of Nursing, Sichuan University, Nursing Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
| | - Dandan Wang
- Department of Nursing, West China Hospital, Sichuan University/West China School of Nursing, Sichuan University, Nursing Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
| | - Mingyue Zheng
- Adelaide Medical School, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
| | - Jan D Reinhardt
- Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
- Swiss Paraplegic Research, Nottwil, Switzerland
- Department of Health Sciences and Medicine, University of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland
- Rehabilitation Medicine Center, Jiangsu Province Hospital/Nanjing Medical University First Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing, China
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Shankar K, Chandrasekaran R, Jeripity Venkata P, Miketinas D. Investigating the Role of Nutrition in Enhancing Immunity During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Twitter Text-Mining Analysis. J Med Internet Res 2023; 25:e47328. [PMID: 37428522 PMCID: PMC10366666 DOI: 10.2196/47328] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/16/2023] [Revised: 05/09/2023] [Accepted: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 07/11/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the spotlight the critical role played by a balanced and healthy diet in bolstering the human immune system. There is burgeoning interest in nutrition-related information on social media platforms like Twitter. There is a critical need to assess and understand public opinion, attitudes, and sentiments toward nutrition-related information shared on Twitter. OBJECTIVE This study uses text mining to analyze nutrition-related messages on Twitter to identify and analyze how the general public perceives various food groups and diets for improving immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. METHODS We gathered 71,178 nutrition-related tweets that were posted between January 01, 2020, and September 30, 2020. The Correlated Explanation text mining algorithm was used to identify frequently discussed topics that users mentioned as contributing to immunity building against SARS-CoV-2. We assessed the relative importance of these topics and performed a sentiment analysis. We also qualitatively examined the tweets to gain a closer understanding of nutrition-related topics and food groups. RESULTS Text-mining yielded 10 topics that users discussed frequently on Twitter, viz proteins, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy-related, spices and herbs, fluids, supplements, avoidable foods, and specialty diets. Supplements were the most frequently discussed topic (23,913/71,178, 33.6%) with a higher proportion (20,935/23,913, 87.75%) exhibiting a positive sentiment with a score of 0.41. Consuming fluids (17,685/71,178, 24.85%) and fruits (14,807/71,178, 20.80%) were the second and third most frequent topics with favorable, positive sentiments. Spices and herbs (8719/71,178, 12.25%) and avoidable foods (8619/71,178, 12.11%) were also frequently discussed. Negative sentiments were observed for a higher proportion of avoidable foods (7627/8619, 84.31%) with a sentiment score of -0.39. CONCLUSIONS This study identified 10 important food groups and associated sentiments that users discussed as a means to improve immunity. Our findings can help dieticians and nutritionists to frame appropriate interventions and diet programs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kavitha Shankar
- Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Texas Woman's University Institute for Health Sciences, Houston, TX, United States
| | - Ranganathan Chandrasekaran
- Department of Information and Decision Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| | | | - Derek Miketinas
- Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Texas Woman's University Institute for Health Sciences, Houston, TX, United States
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Klein AZ, Kunatharaju S, O'Connor K, Gonzalez-Hernandez G. Automatically Identifying Self-Reports of COVID-19 Diagnosis on Twitter: An Annotated Data Set, Deep Neural Network Classifiers, and a Large-Scale Cohort. J Med Internet Res 2023; 25:e46484. [PMID: 37399062 PMCID: PMC10365612 DOI: 10.2196/46484] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/13/2023] [Revised: 05/03/2023] [Accepted: 05/25/2023] [Indexed: 07/04/2023] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Ari Z Klein
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Shriya Kunatharaju
- Autism Spectrum Program of Excellence, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Karen O'Connor
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
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Squires A, Clark-Cutaia M, Henderson MD, Arneson G, Resnik P. "Should I stay or should I go?" Nurses' perspectives about working during the Covid-19 pandemic's first wave in the United States: A summative content analysis combined with topic modeling. Int J Nurs Stud 2022; 131:104256. [PMID: 35544991 PMCID: PMC9020864 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2022.104256] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2021] [Revised: 04/04/2022] [Accepted: 04/07/2022] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic had its first peak in the United States between April and July of 2020, with incidence and prevalence rates of the virus the greatest in the northeastern coast of the country. At the time of study implementation, there were few studies capturing the perspectives of nurses working the frontlines of the pandemic in any setting as research output in the United States focused largely on treating the disease. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to capture the perspectives of nurses in the United States working the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic's first wave. We were specifically interested in examining the impact of the pandemic on nurses' roles, professional relationships, and the organizational cultures of their employers. DESIGN We conducted an online qualitative study with a pragmatic design to capture the perspectives of nurses working during the first wave of the United States COVID-19 pandemic. Through social networking recruitment, frontline nurses from across the country were invited to participate. Participants provided long form, text-based responses to four questions designed to capture their experiences. A combination of Latent Dirichlet Allocation--a natural language processing technique--along with traditional summative content analysis techniques were used to analyze the data. SETTING The United States during the COVID-19 pandemic's first wave between May and July of 2020. RESULTS A total of 318 nurses participated from 29 out of 50 states, with 242 fully completing all questions. Findings suggested that the place of work mattered significantly in terms of the frontline working experience. It influenced role changes, risk assumption, interprofessional teamwork experiences, and ultimately, likelihood to leave their jobs or the profession altogether. Organizational culture and its influence on pandemic response implementation was a critical feature of their experiences. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest that organizational performance during the pandemic may be reflected in nursing workforce retention as the risk for workforce attrition appears high. It was also clear from the reports that nurses appear to have assumed higher occupational risks during the pandemic when compared to other providers. The 2020 data from this study also offered a number of signals about potential threats to the stability and sustainability of the US nursing workforce that are now manifesting. The findings underscore the importance of conducting health workforce research during a crisis in order to discern the signals of future problems or for long-term crisis response. TWEETABLE ABSTRACT Healthcare leaders made the difference for nurses during the pandemic. How many nurses leave their employer in the next year will tell you who was good, who wasn't.
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Affiliation(s)
- Allison Squires
- Rory Meyers College of Nursing, New York University, 433 First Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10010, United States of America,Corresponding author
| | - Maya Clark-Cutaia
- Rory Meyers College of Nursing, New York University, 433 First Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10010, United States of America
| | - Marcus D. Henderson
- School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States of America
| | - Gavin Arneson
- Rory Meyers College of Nursing, New York University, 433 First Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10010, United States of America
| | - Philip Resnik
- Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States of America
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Guo JW, Sisler SM, Wang CY, Wallace AS. Exploring experiences of COVID-19-positive individuals from social media posts. Int J Nurs Pract 2021; 27:e12986. [PMID: 34128296 PMCID: PMC8420411 DOI: 10.1111/ijn.12986] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2020] [Revised: 05/16/2021] [Accepted: 05/27/2021] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
Abstract
Aims This study aimed to explore the experience of individuals who claimed to be COVID‐19 positive via their Twitter feeds. Background Public social media data are valuable to understanding people's experiences of public health phenomena. To improve care to those with COVID‐19, this study explored themes from Twitter feeds, generated by individuals who self‐identified as COVID‐19 positive. Design This study utilized a descriptive design for text analysis for social media data. Methods This study analysed social media text retrieved by tweets of individuals in the United States who self‐reported being COVID‐19 positive and posted on Twitter in English between April 2, 2020, and April 24, 2020. In extracting embedded topics from tweets, we applied topic modelling approach based on latent Dirichlet allocation and visualized the results via LDAvis, a related web‐based interactive visualization tool. Results Three themes were mined from 721 eligible tweets: (i) recognizing the seriousness of the condition in COVID‐19 pandemic; (ii) having symptoms of being COVID‐19 positive; and (iii) sharing the journey of being COVID‐19 positive. Conclusion Leveraging the knowledge and context of study themes, we present experiences that may better reflect patient needs while experiencing COVID‐19. The findings offer more descriptive support for public health nursing and other translational public health efforts during a global pandemic. What is already known about this topic? Social media data can be used to predict potential outbreak areas, which has been beneficial to informing decision makers. Public opinions about the pandemic can be extracted from social media data, which helps understand patients and the public's experiences and potential needs. In the early stage of the novel COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States, little was known about the experiences and needs of those with COVID‐19.
What this paper adds? Individuals who claimed to be COVID‐19 positive used the social media platform (e.g., Twitter) as a broader communication strategy to their social networks during the social distancing phase at the early stage of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Key messages delivered through the social media included warning their family, friends and network take the pandemic seriously, expressing their symptom profiles related to COVID‐19 and sharing their journey of being a COVID‐19 patient. Although latent Dirichlet allocation may be underutilized in nursing research, valuable information regarding mental health issues can be discovered and amplified from the social media data using this methodology.
The implications of this paper: Substantial evidence encourages the public health community to engage in more detailed mental health screening of patients with COVID‐19. By leveraging the knowledge and context of the social media threads (e.g., patient perspective), there is ample opportunity for more focal and descriptive public health interventions to mitigate the stress and uncertainty of a pandemic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jia-Wen Guo
- College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
| | - Shawna M Sisler
- College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
| | - Ching-Yu Wang
- College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
| | - Andrea S Wallace
- College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
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