ABSTRACT

Background: A reduced quality of life for people with aphasia is in part associated with their loss of friendships and social networks. Twitter offers people with communication disability a way to exchange information, develop and maintain their social networks and connections, and participate in society online. However, little is known about how Twitter is used to exchange information about aphasia or to build communities online that might support people with aphasia in their communication goals.

Aims: To examine the network data and content of tweets tagged with #aphasia to understand more about how Twitter is used by people with aphasia, aphasia organisations, aphasiologists, clinicians, and the public.

Method: A Twitter hashtag study was conducted to locate tweets highly relevant to aphasia. A daily tweet capture using the Twitter search bar was conducted for one month, November 2018, searching for publicly available tweets tagged with aphasia-related hashtags. The tweets collected were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Results: A sample of 2,519 tweets were included in the analysis. The sample comprised 865 original tweets and 1,654 retweets which included “quote tweets”, sent by 839 unique Twitter @Users. Tweet content reflected users discussing aphasia research, exchanging health information, advice and inspiration, providing personal stories, raising awareness about aphasia, and an emergent aphasia community online.

Conclusion: The aphasia community in Twitter is relatively small compared to other communities focused on communication disability and is emergent in terms of its size and the strength of connections. The majority of people or organisations tweeting about aphasia, and hence influencing the network, were health professionals working in the field of aphasia. There was minimal conversational interaction evident. These results demonstrate that Twitter is underutilised as a platform for interaction and engagement in relation to aphasia, and further research is needed.

摘要

背景：失语症患者生活质量下降部分与他们失去友谊和社交网络有关。Twitter 为有沟通障碍的人提供了一种交流信息、发展和维护他们的社交网络和联系以及在线参与社会的方式。然而，人们对 Twitter 如何用于交换有关失语症的信息或建立在线社区以支持失语症患者的沟通目标知之甚少。

目标：检查标记为#aphasia 的推文的网络数据和内容，以更多地了解失语症患者、失语症组织、失语症学家、临床医生和公众如何使用 Twitter。

方法：进行了一项 Twitter 标签研究以定位与失语症高度相关的推文。使用 Twitter 搜索栏进行了为期一个月的每日推文捕获，即 2018 年 11 月，搜索标有失语症相关主题标签的公开推文。使用定性和定量方法分析收集的推文。

结果：分析中包含了 2,519 条推文样本。该样本包含 865 条原始推文和 1,654 条转发，其中包括“引用推文”，由 839 个唯一的 Twitter @Users 发送。推文内容反映用户讨论失语症研究、交流健康信息、建议和灵感、提供个人故事、提高对失语症的认识以及在线新兴失语症社区。

结论：与其他专注于沟通障碍的社区相比，Twitter 中的失语症社区相对较小，并且在其规模和联系强度方面是新兴的。大多数发布有关失语症并因此影响网络的人或组织是在失语症领域工作的卫生专业人员。明显的对话互动很少。这些结果表明，Twitter 作为与失语症相关的互动和参与平台未得到充分利用，需要进一步研究。