Background

Alcohol use varies throughout the year and often peaks on weekends or during celebrations (e.g., New Year’s). There is not a perfect correlation between alcohol use and negative consequences, and the extent to which one particularly risky consequence—an alcohol-related blackout—is more common during certain times of the year is unknown. Identifying when blackouts occur may help identify which periods are associated with more risk and be critical in designing public health campaigns. Thus, we examined Twitter data to ascertain whether alcohol-related blackouts occur more during certain holidays/celebrations than typical weekends and whether they differed in timing from general alcohol-related Tweets.

Methods

We used a Twitter-sponsored platform to access unique Tweets written in the United States referencing blackouts (e.g., “blackout”) and alcohol generally (e.g., “drunk”).

Results

The final dataset included 3.5 million blackout Tweets and 591 million alcohol Tweets (written between 2009 and 2020). Both blackout and alcohol Tweets were written in the late evening, on weekends, and during certain holidays (New Years, St. Patrick’s). However, relative to typical weekends, only blackout Tweets were more common during Thanksgiving and only general alcohol-related Tweets were more common during Cinco de Mayo.

Conclusion

While blackout and alcohol-related Tweets were similar in time of day (peaking in the evening) and day of week (peaking on weekends), they differed during certain celebrations/holidays, suggesting that while alcohol use may be more common during some celebrations, others are more associated with serious harms.

中文翻译：

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与酒精相关的停电推文何时在美国发布？

背景

酒精使用一年四季都不同，通常在周末或庆祝活动（例如新年）期间达到高峰。饮酒与负面后果之间没有完美的相关性，而且在一年中的某些时候，一个特别危险的后果——与酒精相关的停电——在多大程度上更常见是未知的。确定何时发生停电可能有助于确定哪些时期与更高的风险相关，并且对于设计公共卫生运动至关重要。因此，我们检查了 Twitter 数据，以确定在某些假期/庆祝活动期间与酒精相关的停电是否比典型的周末发生得更多，以及它们在时间上是否与一般与酒精相关的推文有所不同。

方法

我们使用 Twitter 赞助的平台访问在美国撰写的独特推文，这些推文涉及停电（例如，“停电”）和酒精（例如，“醉酒”）。

结果

最终的数据集包括 350 万条停电推文和 5.91 亿条酒精推文（写于 2009 年至 2020 年之间）。停电和喝酒的推文都是在深夜、周末和某些假期（新年，圣帕特里克节）写的。然而，相对于典型的周末，感恩节期间只有停电推文更常见，而在 Cinco de Mayo 期间只有与酒精相关的一般推文更常见。

结论

虽然停电和与酒精相关的推文在一天中的时间（在晚上达到峰值）和一周中的哪一天（在周末达到峰值）相似，但它们在某些庆祝活动/假期中有所不同，这表明虽然在某些庆祝活动中饮酒可能更常见，其他的则与严重危害有关。