Twitter and Pain: An Observational Analysis of Pain-Related Tweets in Ireland

ABSTRACT Introduction Studies involving Twitter and chronic pain can provide highly valuable patient-generated information. The aim of this paper was to examine pain-related tweets in Ireland over a two-week period 22 nd June 2017-5 th July 2017 using pain-related keywords. We wished to identify demographic details regarding the Twitter users; most common topics discussed; sentiment analysis; and reach of tweets Methods A third-party data analytics company used 24 pain-related keywords over a 14-day period between the dates 22nd June – 5th July 2017. Results There were 941 tweets identified during the study from 715 contributors. These reached 2.62 million accounts and generated 2.88 million impressions. The most frequently occurring keywords were headache (n=321); migraine (n=147); back pain (n=123); cannabis (n=114); and chronic pain (n=85). There were 1.94 times as many tweets from females as males. The highest proportion of tweets from female users was in the fibromyalgia (83%) and migraine (60%) categories, and from males in the sciatica (35%), chronic pain (34%) and back pain (32%) categories. Cannabis-related tweets reflected mostly non-personal content (90%), with a highly positive sentiment, and the highest reach per tweet. The largest amount of advice was offered in the back pain category. Retweets were more likely to reflect a positive sentiment. Conclusion A substantial discussion of pain-related topics took place on Twitter during our study period. This provided real-time, dynamic information from individuals on discussion topics in pain medicine. This can be used to gain a greater understanding of the pain experience. As patients are increasingly acquiring healthcare information through online sources, high quality information from approved sources should be promoted on such platforms.