Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
Gateway to the Great Outdoors, Chicago, IL 60613, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Jan 20;15(1):162. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15010162.
Exposure to lead has long been a community health concern in St. Louis, Missouri. The objective of this study was to examine public response to reports of elevated lead levels in school drinking water in St. Louis, Missouri via Twitter, a microblogging platform with over 320 million active users. We used a mixed-methods design to examine Twitter user status updates, known as "tweets," from 18 August to 31 December 2016. The number of tweets each day was recorded, and Twitter users were classified into five user types (General Public, Journalist/News, Health Professional/Academic, Politician/Government Official, and Non-Governmental Organization). A total of 492 tweets were identified during the study period. The majority of discourse on Twitter occurred during the two-week period after initial media reports and was driven by members of the General Public. Thematic analysis of tweets revealed four themes: Information Sharing, Health Concerns, Sociodemographic Disparities, and Outrage. Twitter users characterized lead in school drinking water as an issue of environmental inequity. The findings of this study provide evidence that social media platforms can be utilized as valuable tools for public health researchers and practitioners to gauge public sentiment about environmental health issues, identify emerging community concerns, and inform future communication and research strategies regarding environmental health hazards.
长期以来，密苏里州圣路易斯市的铅暴露一直是社区健康关注的焦点。本研究的目的是通过微博客平台 Twitter 来研究公众对圣路易斯市学校饮用水中铅含量升高的报告的反应，该平台拥有超过 3.2 亿活跃用户。我们采用混合方法设计来检查 2016 年 8 月 18 日至 12 月 31 日期间的 Twitter 用户状态更新，即“推文”。每天记录推文数量，并将 Twitter 用户分为五类（普通公众、记者/新闻、健康专业人员/学者、政治家/政府官员和非政府组织）。在研究期间共确定了 492 条推文。Twitter 上的大部分讨论都发生在最初的媒体报道后的两周内，主要由普通公众推动。推文的主题分析揭示了四个主题：信息共享、健康关注、社会人口差异和愤怒。Twitter 用户将学校饮用水中的铅描述为环境不公平问题。这项研究的结果表明，社交媒体平台可以作为公共卫生研究人员和从业者的有价值工具，用于衡量公众对环境健康问题的看法，识别新出现的社区关注问题，并为环境健康危害的未来沟通和研究策略提供信息。
