Cervical Myelopathy and social media: A Mixed Methods Analysis (Preprint)

Abstract

Degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is a progressive neurologic condition caused by age-related degeneration of the cervical spine. Social media has become a crucial part of many patients’ lives; however, little is known about social media use pertaining to degenerative cervical myelopathy.

This manuscript describes the landscape of social media use and DCM in patients, caretakers, clinicians, and researchers.

A comprehensive search of the entire Twitter application programing interface (API) database from inception to March 2022 was performed to identify all Tweets about cervical myelopathy. Data on the Tweet user included geographic location, number of followers, and number of Tweets. The number of tweet likes, retweets, quotes, and total engagement, were collected. Tweets were also categorized based on their underlying themes. Mentions pertaining to past or upcoming surgical procedures were recorded. A natural language processing algorithm was used to assign a polarity score, subjectivity score, and analysis label to each Tweet for sentiment analysis.

Overall, 1859 unique tweets from 1769 accounts met inclusion criteria. The highest frequency of tweets was seen in 2018 and 2019 and decreased significantly in 2020-2021. Most (50.3%) of the tweets were written by authors in the US, UK, or Canada. Account categorization showed that 37.8% of users discussing DCM on Twitter were MDs or researchers, 23.5% were patients or caregivers, and 11.4% were news media outlets. Tweets most often discussed research (40.9%), followed by spreading awareness or informing the public on DCM (30.1%). Tweets describing personal patient perspectives of living with DCM were seen in 15.9% of posts, with 24% of these discussing upcoming or past surgical experiences. Few Tweets were related to advertising (1.7%) or fundraising (0.4%). 50% of tweets included a link, 14% included media (photo or video), and 32% included a hashtag. Overall, 847(45.6%) of Tweets were classified as neutral, 717(38.6%) as positive, and 295(15.9%) as negative.

When categorized thematically, most tweets are related to research, followed by spreading awareness or informing the public on DCM. Almost 25% of tweets describing patients’ personal experiences with DCM discuss past or upcoming surgical interventions. Few posts pertain to advertising or fundraising. These data can help identify areas for improvement of public awareness online, particularly regarding education, support, and fundraising.