Understanding and Diagnosing Antimicrobial Resistance on Social Media: A Yearlong Overview of Data and Analytics

• In Event: Effects of Social Media on Health Risk Perceptions and Healthy Behavior

Abstract

To better understand user conversations revolving around antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) on Twitter, we used an online data collection and analysis toolkit with full firehose access to collect corpuses of tweets with “antibiotic” and “antimicrobial resistance” keyword tracks. The date range included tweets from November 28th, 2015 to November 25th, 2016 for both datasets. This year-long date range provides insight into how users have discussed antibiotics and AMR and identifies any spikes in activity during a particular time frame. Overall, we found that discussions about antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance predominantly occur in the United States and United Kingdom, with roughly equal gender participation. These conversations are influenced by news sources, health professionals, and governmental health organizations. Users will often defer to retweet and recirculate content posted from these official sources and link to external articles instead of posting their own musings on the subjects. Our findings are important benchmarks in understanding the prevalence and reach of potential misinformation about antibiotics and AMR on Twitter.

Authors

• Brittany Andersen, Boston U

• Lee Hair, Boston University

• Jacob Groshek

• Arunima Krishna, Boston U

• Dylan Walker, Boston U