Precise, deliberate, thorough—good descriptions for the population-based surveys that public health research often depends on, but a hilariously off-target summary of the daily discourse and diatribe on Twitter.
But that freewheeling, broad-based nature of the platform has its advantages, and now a University of Maryland public health scholar has found that our 280-character pearls of wisdom (or rants) translate to real-world health outcomes that can be mapped nationwide.
In a series of studies over several years, Assistant Professor Quynh Nguyen in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics has shown that how the estimated 22% of American adults on Twitter discuss topics like food and exercise correlates to measures like obesity and mortality in various locations; a town awash in triathlon chatter, for instance, probably has lower blood pressure than one where barbecue discussion holds sway.
Although she researches Twitter primarily, she has also cross-checked Yelp and health data: “If you look at an area with a lot of hamburger reviews—high-caloric foods—you also find higher prevalence of diabetes and obesity.”
More recently, Nguyen has focused on social media expressions of racial sentiment. In a paper early this year, she and co-authors showed that areas with plenty of tweets dripping with racial animus had worse cardio health among minority and majority populations alike compared to more harmonious locales. A forthcoming study shows a similar negative effect on birth outcomes.
Twitter is far from a perfect cross section of America, Nguyen admits, but still, this platform for spontaneous sharing—and venting—provides “access to things that are very difficult or impossible to find in other data.”
Issue
Fall 2020