# Exploring stroke discourse on Twitter through content and network analysis among Indian users

## TL;DR

This study analyzed stroke-related conversations on Twitter in India to understand common topics and influential users, aiming to help public health professionals create better outreach strategies.

## Contribution

The study provides new insights into stroke discourse in India through content and network analysis of Twitter data.

## Key findings

- Half of stroke-related tweets in India focused on seeking support and post-stroke bereavement sharing with high reachability.
- Only 14.6% of tweets discussed risk factors, awareness, and prevention, while management, research, and promotion had the lowest retweet ratio.
- Twitter is shown as a valuable platform for disseminating and acquiring stroke-related information in India.

## Abstract

The study aimed to understand stroke-related Twitter conversations in India, focusing on topics, message sources, reach, and influential users to provide insights to stakeholders regarding community needs for knowledge, support, and interventions. Geo-tagged Twitter posts focusing on stroke originating from India and, spanning from November 7, 2022, to February 28, 2023, were systematically obtained via the Twitter application programming interface, using keywords and hashtags sourced through Symplur Signals. Preprocessing involved the removal of hashtags, stop words, and URLs. The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model was used to identify recurring stroke-related topics, while influential users were identified through social network analysis. About half of the tweets about stroke in India were about seeking support and post-stroke bereavement sharing and had the highest reachability. Four out of 10 tweets were from the individual twitter users. Tweets on the topic risk factors, awareness and prevention (14.6%) constituted the least proportion, whereas the topic management, research, and promotion had the least retweet ratio. Twitter demonstrates significant potential as a platform for both disseminating and acquiring stroke-related information within the Indian context. The identified topics and understanding of the content of discussion offer valuable resources to public health professionals and organizations to develop targeted educational and engagement strategies for the relevant audience.