Examination of social worlds of risky drinking. Insights from Twitter data analysis

PLoS One. 2024 Feb 23;19(2):e0289237. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289237. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Rich nature of social media data offers a great opportunity to examine social worlds of its users. Further to wide range of topics being discussed on social media, alcohol-related content is prevalent on social media and studies have found an association between this content and increased consumption of alcohol, cravings for alcohol and addiction. This study analyses social media data to examine social worlds of risky drinking in Victoria, Australia. This study conducted a scoping literature review and two online surveys, one with the general community and the other with health professionals, to determine key words to search for on social media sites. These keywords were used in a social media analytics tool called Talkwalker to generate quantitative and qualitative data on the social media users and their conversations. NVIVO was used for developing categories and themes in a sample of 172 posts. A total of 1,021 results were obtained from Twitter. The main demographic group found to be involved in conversations about drinking alcohol on Twitter was young fathers aged 25-34 years. The culture of alcohol consumption in Victoria for Twitter users is reflective of Australia's drinking culture within which risky drinking, and in particular binge drinking, is normalised.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Alcohol Drinking / epidemiology
  • Communication
  • Craving
  • Humans
  • Social Media*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Victoria

Grants and funding

This study was financially supported by the Access Health and Community, Melbourne Australia (https://accesshc.org.au/) in the form of a grant (4000003452) received by AA and JM. This part of the funding was used to source the software required for Social Media data collection. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Prince Sultan University for paying the Article Processing Charges.