Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System

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.