Abstract:
In recent years social media has become an integral part of everybody lives where
people are using networking sites to discuss and share their personal and valuable
information. On the other hand, health care professionals are using these services to
engage patients, provide education, patient care, and promote public health programs.
This valuable information can be used to gain insights on information flow and social
networking within a society. The President of the United States declared the country
under public health emergency in regard to opioid crisis in October 2017. The opioid
crisis has become a national issue affecting individuals, families, communities, and states
where each state suffers the burden of this crisis. A significant toll is paid by the state to
cover the cost related to criminal justice, health care, education, social welfare, public
welfare, and lost productivity. In this study, we intended to learn how social media
services can be used to help health lawmakers in creating policies. The thesis aims to identify socio-demographic factors and significant topics related to opioid overdose death
rates in the U.S. by analyzing opioid-related chatter using social media analysis at the
state level. We identified 25 states as our area of study in the U.S. by comparing drug
overdose death rate with opioid prescription rate for 2017 and collected Twitter data for
three months period from November 2017 to January 2018. Based on this data, states
with similar topics were identified where topics contained keywords signifying continual
chatter to raise awareness and provide treatment to the community in regard to drug
overdose and addiction specifically for opioids.
In addition, these states shared the same characteristics for demographics which indicated
that areas were a higher number of drug overdose deaths are occurring are also areas
where chatter in social media is also prevalent. These results support the premise that
social media specifically Twitter can be used as a tool to increase awareness, provide
education, and change health care policies.
