Information Sources and Needs in the Obesity and Diabetes Twitter Discourse
Yelena Mejova

TL;DR
This study analyzes 1.5 million tweets about obesity and diabetes to assess information quality, user behavior, and needs, revealing prevalent non-authoritative sources, fat-shaming, and diverse, emotionally charged questions.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive analysis of social media discourse on obesity and diabetes, highlighting misinformation, harmful behaviors, and diverse informational needs.
Findings
High presence of non-affiliated health sources in tweets
Tweets with non-authoritative sources are retweeted more
Significant fat-shaming observed in discourse
Abstract
Obesity and diabetes epidemics are affecting about a third and tenth of US population, respectively, capturing the attention of the nation and its institutions. Social media provides an open forum for communication between individuals and health organizations, a forum which is easily joined by parties seeking to gain profit from it. In this paper we examine 1.5 million tweets mentioning obesity and diabetes in order to assess (1) the quality of information circulating in this conversation, as well as (2) the behavior and information needs of the users engaged in it. The analysis of top cited domains shows a strong presence of health information sources which are not affiliated with a governmental or academic institution at 41% in obesity and 50% diabetes samples, and that tweets containing these domains are retweeted more than those containing domains of reputable sources. On the user…
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