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Engagement with health agencies on twitter.
Sanmitra Bhattacharya1, Padmini Srinivasan1, Phil Polgreen2
1Department of Computer Science, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America.
Plos One
|November 8, 2014
Summary
Federal Health Agencies can boost Twitter engagement by using hashtags and URLs. Factors like tweet age and follower count also positively influence retweets, offering actionable insights for public health communication.
Area of Science:
- Public Health Communication
- Social Media Analytics
- Digital Health Engagement
Background:
- U.S. Federal Health Agencies utilize Twitter for public health communication.
- Understanding factors influencing Twitter engagement is crucial for maximizing reach and impact.
- Previous research has explored social media engagement but specific factors for federal health agencies require further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate factors associated with Twitter engagement for U.S. Federal Health Agencies.
- To analyze the impact of tweet characteristics and account features on retweets and engagement timing.
- To identify modifiable factors that agencies can leverage to increase public health communication effectiveness on Twitter.
Main Methods:
- Collected 164,104 tweets from 25 Federal Health Agencies across 130 accounts.
- Employed negative binomial hurdle regression and Cox proportional hazards models.
- Analyzed 26 factors including account network centrality, tweet features (hashtags, URLs, sentiment), and content semantics.
Main Results:
- A significant portion of tweets (one-third) received zero retweets.
- Hashtags, URLs, and user-mentions were positively associated with retweets.
- Tweet age and follower count positively correlated with engagement, while tweet count showed a negative association.
Conclusions:
- Agencies can enhance Twitter engagement by strategically using elements like hashtags and URLs.
- Tweet age and follower count are significant predictors of engagement.
- Findings provide a foundation for experimental interventions to improve public health outreach on Twitter.
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