Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2015 Oct 29;17(10):e246.
doi: 10.2196/jmir.4898.

Are Health-Related Tweets Evidence Based? Review and Analysis of Health-Related Tweets on Twitter

Khalid A Alnemer  1 , Waleed M Alhuzaim, Ahmed A Alnemer, Bader B Alharbi, Abdulrahman S Bawazir, Omar R Barayyan, Faisal K Balaraj
Affiliations
Review

Are Health-Related Tweets Evidence Based? Review and Analysis of Health-Related Tweets on Twitter

Khalid A Alnemer et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Health care professionals are utilizing Twitter to communicate, develop disease surveillance systems, and mine health-related information. The immediate users of this health information is the general public, including patients. This necessitates the validation of health-related tweets by health care professionals to ensure they are evidence based and to avoid the use of noncredible information as a basis for critical decisions.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate health-related tweets on Twitter for validity (evidence based) and to create awareness in the community regarding the importance of evidence-based health-related tweets.

Methods: All tweets containing health-related information in the Arabic language posted April 1-5, 2015, were mined from Twitter. The tweets were classified based on popularity, activity, interaction, and frequency to obtain 25 Twitter accounts (8 physician accounts, 10 nonofficial health institute accounts, 4 dietitian accounts, and 3 government institute accounts) and 625 tweets. These tweets were evaluated by 3 American Board-certified medical consultants and a score was generated (true/false) and interobserver agreement was calculated.

Results: A total of 625 health-related Arabic-language tweets were identified from 8 physician accounts, 10 nonofficial health institute accounts, 4 dietician accounts, and 3 government institute accounts. The reviewers labeled 320 (51.2%) tweets as false and 305 (48.8%) tweets as true. Comparative analysis of tweets by account type showed 60 of 75 (80%) tweets by government institutes, 124 of 201 (61.7%) tweets by physicians, and 42 of 101 (41.6%) tweets by dieticians were true. The interobserver agreement was moderate (range 0.78-0.22). More than half of the health-related tweets (169/248, 68.1%) from nonofficial health institutes and dietician accounts (59/101, 58.4%) were false. Tweets by the physicians were more likely to be rated "true" compared to other groups (P<.001).

Conclusions: Approximately half of the medical tweets from professional accounts on Twitter were found to be false based on expert review. Furthermore, most of the evidence-based health-related tweets are posted by government institutes and physicians.

Keywords: daily medical information; diseases; doctor accounts; health; health accounts; medical accounts; nutrition accounts.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Collection of data flowchart.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Oyeyemi SO, Gabarron E, Wynn R. Ebola, Twitter, and misinformation: a dangerous combination? BMJ. 2014;349:g6178. - PubMed
    1. Scanfeld D, Scanfeld V, Larson EL. Dissemination of health information through social networks: twitter and antibiotics. Am J Infect Control. 2010 Apr;38(3):182–8. doi: 10.1016/j.ajic.2009.11.004. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/20347636 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chew C, Eysenbach G. Pandemics in the age of Twitter: content analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. PLoS One. 2010 Nov;5(11):e14118. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014118. http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014118 - DOI - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gabarron E, Serrano JA, Wynn R, Lau AY. Tweet content related to sexually transmitted diseases: no joking matter. J Med Internet Res. 2014;16(10):e228. doi: 10.2196/jmir.3259. http://www.jmir.org/2014/10/e228/ - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Prabhu V, Rosenkrantz A. AuntMinnie.com. 2015. Twitter posts highlight patient fears over CT radiation risk http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=109803.

MeSH terms