Behaviour and Health Research Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
BMJ Open. 2017 Feb 28;7(2):e015493. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-015493.
In January 2016, the 4 UK Chief Medical Officers released a public consultation regarding updated guidelines for low-risk alcohol consumption. This study aimed to assess responses to the updated guidelines using comments made on Twitter.
Tweets containing the hashtag #alcoholguidelines made during 1 week following the announcement of the updated guidelines were retrieved using the Twitter Archiver tool. The source, sentiment and themes of the tweets were categorised using manual content analysis.
A total of 3061 tweets was retrieved. 6 sources were identified, the most prominent being members of the public. Of 821 tweets expressing sentiment specifically towards the guidelines, 80% expressed a negative sentiment. 11 themes were identified, 3 of which were broadly supportive of the guidelines, 7 broadly unsupportive and 1 neutral. Overall, more tweets were unsupportive (49%) than supportive (44%). While the most common theme overall was sharing information, the most common in tweets from members of the public encouraged alcohol consumption (15%) or expressed disagreement with the guidelines (14%), reflecting reactance, resistance and misunderstanding.
This descriptive analysis revealed a number of themes present in unsupportive comments towards the updated UK alcohol guidelines among a largely proalcohol community. An understanding of these may help to tailor effective communication of alcohol and health-related policies, and could inform a more dynamic approach to health communication via social media.
2016 年 1 月，4 位英国首席医疗官发布了一项关于低风险饮酒指南更新的公众咨询。本研究旨在通过分析更新指南公布后在 Twitter 上发表的评论，评估对更新指南的反应。
使用 Twitter 归档工具检索更新指南公布后 1 周内包含主题标签“#alcoholguidelines”的推文。使用手动内容分析法对推文的来源、情绪和主题进行分类。
共检索到 3061 条推文。确定了 6 个来源，其中最突出的是公众成员。在 821 条专门针对指南表达情绪的推文中，80%表示负面情绪。确定了 11 个主题，其中 3 个主题大致支持该指南，7 个主题大致不支持，1 个主题中立。总的来说，不支持（49%）的推文多于支持（44%）的推文。虽然总体上最常见的主题是分享信息，但来自公众成员的推文中最常见的主题是鼓励饮酒（15%）或表示不同意该指南（14%），反映了抵触、抵制和误解。
本描述性分析揭示了在更新后的英国酒精指南的不支持性评论中存在的一些主题，这些主题在一个基本支持饮酒的社区中存在。了解这些主题可能有助于为酒精和健康相关政策的有效沟通提供信息，并为通过社交媒体进行更具活力的健康沟通提供信息。
