Park Albert

Obesity can lead to the death of at least 2.8 million people each year1, yet the rate of obesity around the world has continuously increased over the past 30 years1. Societal changes, including increased food consumption and decreased physical activity, have been determined as two of the main drivers behind the current obesity pandemic2. Examining socio-cultural factors (i.e., attitudes or perceptions of cultural groups)3 associated with food consumption and weight loss can provide important insights to guide effective interventions and a novel surveillance approach to characterize population obesity trends from sociological perspectives. The primary goal of this study is to examine socio-cultural factors associated with food consumption and weight loss by conducting sentiment analysis on related online chatters. The secondary goal is to discuss the potential implications of being exposed to these different chatters in the online environment. Scientific evidence in support of using social media to understand socio-cultural factors and its potential implications can be illustrated in two concise assertions. First, online chatters, including discussions on social media, have been shown to be an effective data source for understanding public interests4,5. Second, prolonged participation in social media has been suggested to have impacts on users6-8.

Objective: We aim to better understand socio-cultural factors (i.e., attitudes or perceptions of cultural groups) associated with food consumption and weight loss via sentiment analysis on tweets, short messages from Twitter.

Overweight and obesity are recognized as one of the greatest modern public health problems1, yet worldwide prevalence of obesity has nearly doubled over the past 30 years2. As part of a strategy to control the obesity pandemic, the WHO recommends an obesity surveillance at the population level3. Empirical studies have shown the importance of social networks in obesity4 and new strategies focusing on social interactions and environments have been proposed5 to prevent the further increase in obesity prevalence. With the increasing use of the internet, online social networks, interactions, and environments (i.e., online social relational factors) deserve more attention. Nearly three- quarters of Americans go online daily6, for functions like connecting with individuals via social network sites7. Like face to face interactions, studies have suggested that social interactions and networks on the internet can influence behavior changes8. Previous studies examining social networking sites typically examine a few selected social networking sites (example studies9,10), although individuals could be members of multiple social networking sites. To better leverage online social relational factors for the purpose of characterizing and monitoring population obesity trends, we investigate weight management community members' other communities and their level of participation, a first step toward utilizing online multifactorial social interactions and environments.

Objective: We aim to better understand online social interactions and environments of individuals interested in weight management from a social media platform called Reddit.

In recent years, individuals have been using social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to discuss health-related topics. These social media platforms consequently became new avenues for research and applications for researchers, for instance disease surveillance. Reddit, in particular, can potentially provide more in-depth contextual insights compared to Twitter, and Reddit members discuss potentially more diverse topics than Facebook members. However, identifying relevant discussions remains a challenge in large datasets like Reddit. Thus, much previous research using Reddit data focused on selected few topically-oriented sub-communities. Although such approach allows for topically focused datasets, a large portion of related data can be missed. In this research, we examine all sub-communities in which members are discussing e-cigarettes in order to determine if investigating these other sub-communities could result in a better smoking surveillance system.

Objective:

We aim to explore how to effectively leverage social media for vaping electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) surveillance. This study examines how members of a social media platform called Reddit utilize topically-oriented sub-communities for e-cigarette discussions.

Nearly 100 people per day die from opioid overdose in the United States. Further, prescription opioid abuse is assumed to be responsible for a 15-year increase in opioid overdose deaths. However, with increasing use of social media comes increasing opportunity to seek and share information. For instance, 80% of Internet users obtain health information online, including popular social interaction sites like Reddit (http://www.reddit.com), which had more than 82.5 billion page views in 20153. In Reddit, members often share information, and include URLs to supplement the information. Understanding the frequency of URL sharing and types of shared URLs can improve our knowledge of information seeking/sharing behaviors as well as domains of shared information on social media. Such knowledge has the potential to provide opportunities to improve public health surveillance practice. We use Reddit to track opioid related discussions and then investigate types of shared URLs among Reddit members in those discussions.

Objective:

We aim to understand (1) the frequency of URL sharing and (2) types of shared URLs among opioid related discussions that take place in the social media platform called Reddit.