Cargando…
The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis
OBJECTIVE: People with disabilities (PWDs) are at greater risk of COVID-19 infection, complications, and death, and experience more difficulty accessing care. We analyzed Twitter tweets to identify important topics and investigate health policies’ effects on PWDs. METHODS: Twitter's application...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2023
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10286555/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37361433 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20552076231182794 |
_version_ | 1785061775534718976 |
---|---|
author | Diaz, Marlon I. Medford, Richard J. Lehmann, Christoph U. Petersen, Carolyn |
author_facet | Diaz, Marlon I. Medford, Richard J. Lehmann, Christoph U. Petersen, Carolyn |
author_sort | Diaz, Marlon I. |
collection | PubMed |
description | OBJECTIVE: People with disabilities (PWDs) are at greater risk of COVID-19 infection, complications, and death, and experience more difficulty accessing care. We analyzed Twitter tweets to identify important topics and investigate health policies’ effects on PWDs. METHODS: Twitter's application programming interface was used to access its public COVID-19 stream. English-language tweets from January 2020 to January 2022 containing a combination of keywords related to COVID-19, disability, discrimination, and inequity were collected and refined to exclude duplicates, replies, and retweets. The remaining tweets were analyzed for user demographics, content, and long-term availability. RESULTS: The collection yielded 94,814 tweets from 43,296 accounts. During the observation period, 1068 (2.5%) accounts were suspended and 1088 (2.5%) accounts were deleted. Account suspension and deletion among verified users tweeting about COVID-19 and disability were 0.13% and 0.3%, respectively. Emotions were similar among active, suspended, and deleted users, with general negative and positive emotions most common followed by sadness, trust, anticipation, and anger. The overall average sentiment for the tweets was negative. Ten of the 12 topics identified (96.8%) related to pandemic effects on PWDs; “politics that rejects and leaves the disabled, elderly, and children behind” (48.3%) and “efforts to support PWDs in the COVID crisis” (31.8%) were most common. The sample of tweets by organizations (43.9%) was higher for this topic than for other COVID-19-related topics the authors have investigated. CONCLUSIONS: The primary discussion addressed how pandemic politics and policies disadvantage PWDs, older adults, and children, and secondarily expressed support for these populations. The increased level of Twitter use by organizations suggests a higher level of organization and advocacy within the disability community than in other groups. Twitter may facilitate recognition of increased harm to or discrimination against specific populations such as people living with disability during national health events. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10286555 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-102865552023-06-23 The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis Diaz, Marlon I. Medford, Richard J. Lehmann, Christoph U. Petersen, Carolyn Digit Health Original Research OBJECTIVE: People with disabilities (PWDs) are at greater risk of COVID-19 infection, complications, and death, and experience more difficulty accessing care. We analyzed Twitter tweets to identify important topics and investigate health policies’ effects on PWDs. METHODS: Twitter's application programming interface was used to access its public COVID-19 stream. English-language tweets from January 2020 to January 2022 containing a combination of keywords related to COVID-19, disability, discrimination, and inequity were collected and refined to exclude duplicates, replies, and retweets. The remaining tweets were analyzed for user demographics, content, and long-term availability. RESULTS: The collection yielded 94,814 tweets from 43,296 accounts. During the observation period, 1068 (2.5%) accounts were suspended and 1088 (2.5%) accounts were deleted. Account suspension and deletion among verified users tweeting about COVID-19 and disability were 0.13% and 0.3%, respectively. Emotions were similar among active, suspended, and deleted users, with general negative and positive emotions most common followed by sadness, trust, anticipation, and anger. The overall average sentiment for the tweets was negative. Ten of the 12 topics identified (96.8%) related to pandemic effects on PWDs; “politics that rejects and leaves the disabled, elderly, and children behind” (48.3%) and “efforts to support PWDs in the COVID crisis” (31.8%) were most common. The sample of tweets by organizations (43.9%) was higher for this topic than for other COVID-19-related topics the authors have investigated. CONCLUSIONS: The primary discussion addressed how pandemic politics and policies disadvantage PWDs, older adults, and children, and secondarily expressed support for these populations. The increased level of Twitter use by organizations suggests a higher level of organization and advocacy within the disability community than in other groups. Twitter may facilitate recognition of increased harm to or discrimination against specific populations such as people living with disability during national health events. SAGE Publications 2023-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC10286555/ /pubmed/37361433 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20552076231182794 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work as published without adaptation or alteration, without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Original Research Diaz, Marlon I. Medford, Richard J. Lehmann, Christoph U. Petersen, Carolyn The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis |
title | The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis |
title_full | The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis |
title_fullStr | The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis |
title_full_unstemmed | The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis |
title_short | The lived experience of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: Content analysis |
title_sort | lived experience of people with disabilities during the covid-19 pandemic on twitter: content analysis |
topic | Original Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10286555/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37361433 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20552076231182794 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT diazmarloni thelivedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis AT medfordrichardj thelivedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis AT lehmannchristophu thelivedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis AT petersencarolyn thelivedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis AT diazmarloni livedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis AT medfordrichardj livedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis AT lehmannchristophu livedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis AT petersencarolyn livedexperienceofpeoplewithdisabilitiesduringthecovid19pandemicontwittercontentanalysis |