Influence of Social Media on the Indian Population’s Perception of Orthodontic-Related Posts: A Mixed Method Analysis

Abstract

Introduction: In little more than a decade, social media has gone from being an entertainment source to a fully integrated part of nearly every aspect of daily life. This study aimed to provide an insight into how orthodontics-related social media posts are looked upon by the Indian population. Material and Methods: Orthodontics-related social media posts were analyzed for the number of likes, shares, and comments. Comments were also scrutinized for determining whether they were appreciation comments or enquiries related to orthodontic treatment and procedure. Posts were collected from 3 platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. A mixed-methods approach was applied. First, all posts were structured according to a quantitative content analysis. Subsequently, qualitative analysis was performed to detect potential differences between the quality of response to posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Using one-way ANOVA test, differences in the data were tabulated. A Chi- Square test was used to analyze the qualitative differences in the comments, which were scrutinized to check if they were appreciation comments or enquiries/doubts related to the posts. Results: There was a significant difference between the numbers of likes, shares, and comments. Appreciation comments were more in number than enquiries. Instagram had the maximum number of likes, followed by Facebook and Twitter ( P < .00001). Facebook had more shares in comparison to Twitter. Upon an analysis done on the number of comments, Facebook was found to have the highest number of comments, followed by Instagram and Twitter. All the results were significant, with P < .00001. Conclusion: It can be concluded that social media awareness related to orthodontics posts among Indians is gaining pace, and a lot can be achieved using these social media platforms to spread awareness related to orthodontic treatment.