健康照護研究的新視野:運用網路搜尋與社群媒體探索肥胖照護議題

Abstract

Background: Despite the fact that many efforts and resources to prevent obesity were invested tremendously before, the obesity rate has continued to rise in Taiwan from 37.48% (2008) to 40.12% (2013). Therefore, a new direction of research becomes more critical. Nowadays, Internet has become a popular media for people searching for health-related knowledge and allows millions of users around the world to communicate through interactive network-oriented social media. The Internet world offers a new perspective for public heath to approach. Objective: This study aims to investigate how Internet health search, online news media and social media affect the virtual obesity community on the Internet. I first explore the association between the business cycle and obesity-related search behavior on the Internet, and then followed by the investigation of the network of Facebook obesity community. Last, the content analysis of bariatric surgery on news media and social media is examined. Material and method: Internet search data was downloaded from Google Trends. Social media data was crawled by Facebook API and Python crawling robot. SPSS statistics, ver 20.0 was used to calculate Pearson correlation coefficient. The UCINET 6.0 and NetDraw software were used to draw and analyze the network dataset. Results: During pre-financial and financial crisis period, Taiwan stock index (TWSE) is positive associated with obesity-related awareness and behavior search, suggesting economic hardship may be the underlying force affecting individual obesity-related internet search. Facebook obesity community possessed network structure and small-world property, and the network clustering co-efficient changed over time. Individual choice, particularly eating, was mostly portrayed in obesity news. However, obesity stigmatization and discrimination were unfortunately filled in the news and reader’s comments. Discussion: From public health viewpoints, Internet surveillance may offer a new way to prevent the obesity. Government may adopt an aggressive way to push effective obesity-related information to Internet through media or search engine. In addition, better management of virtual community on social media may lead to an efficient way to diffuse the correct obesity-related information.