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Information Sources and Needs in the Obesity and Diabetes Twitter Discourse
Obesity and diabetes epidemics are affecting about a third and tenth of US
population, respectively, capturing the attention of the nation and its
institutions. Social media provides an open forum for communication between
individuals and health organizations, a forum which is easily joined by parties
seeking to gain profit from it. In this paper we examine 1.5 million tweets
mentioning obesity and diabetes in order to assess (1) the quality of
information circulating in this conversation, as well as (2) the behavior and
information needs of the users engaged in it. The analysis of top cited domains
shows a strong presence of health information sources which are not affiliated
with a governmental or academic institution at 41% in obesity and 50% diabetes
samples, and that tweets containing these domains are retweeted more than those
containing domains of reputable sources. On the user side, we estimate over a
quarter of non-informational obesity discourse to contain fat-shaming -- a
practice of humiliating and criticizing overweight individuals -- with some
self-directed toward the writers themselves. We also find a great diversity in
questions asked in these datasets, spanning definition of obesity as a disease,
social norms, and governmental policies. Our results indicate a need for
addressing the quality control of health information on social media, as well
as a need to engage in a topically diverse, psychologically charged discourse
around these diseases.Comment: International Digital Health Conference 201