Mapping Indonesian Public Discourse on Oral Health: A Content Analysis of Social Media Using Latent Dirichlet...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Digital Epidemiology
• Social Media Analytics

Background:

• Social media's potential for public health insights in middle-income countries is underexplored.
• This study focuses on Indonesian social media discourse for oral health strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine oral health discourse patterns on Indonesian social media.
• To identify insights for promotive and preventive oral health strategies.

Main Methods:

• Discourse and content analysis of user-generated posts from Quora and Threads (18-month period).
• Automated data extraction, computational text retrieval, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for thematic analysis.
• Statistical testing (chi-square, Monte Carlo simulations) and cross-referencing with national survey data.

Main Results:

• Analysis of 858 posts revealed mouth ulcers and toothache as frequent topics.
• LDA identified 10 themes, including hygiene, children's dental visits, and gum issues.
• Quora focused on symptoms; Threads featured personal narratives, with significant platform-topic association (P < .001).

Conclusions:

• Automated data extraction and LDA effectively uncover community oral health patterns.
• Social media offers real-time, context-relevant data for monitoring oral health needs.
• Findings support targeted public health interventions and communication strategies for improved oral health outcomes.