Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora.
UCHealth Hearing and Balance, University of Colorado Hospital, Aurora.
Am J Audiol. 2022 Sep 21;31(3S):993-1002. doi: 10.1044/2021_AJA-21-00158. Epub 2022 Feb 7.
This study was aimed at identifying key topics in online discussions about tinnitus by examining a large data set extracted from Reddit social media using a natural language processing technique.
A corpus of 113,215 posts about tinnitus was extracted from Reddit's application programming interface. After cleaning the data for duplications and posts without any text information, the sample was reduced to 101,905 posts, which was subjected to cluster analysis using the open-source IRaMuTeQ software to identify main topics based on the co-occurrence of texts. These clusters were named by a panel of tinnitus experts ( = 9) by reading typical text segments within each cluster.
The cluster analysis identified 16 unique clusters that belong to two topics, which were named "tinnitus causes and consequences" and "tinnitus management and coping." Based on their characteristics, the clusters were named: tinnitus timeline (10%), tinnitus perception (9.7%), medical triggers and modulators (8.8%), hearing research (8.8%), attention and silence (8.6%), social media posts about tinnitus (7.4%), hearing protection (7.3%), interaction with hearing health care providers (6.7%), mental health and coping (5.8%), music listening (5.7%), hope for a cure (5.6%), interactions with people without tinnitus (5.4%), dietary supplements and alternative therapies (3.2%), sleep (3.9%), dietary effects (1.7%), and writing about tinnitus and being thankful to online community (1.4%).
Despite some limitations, tinnitus posts on Reddit provide rich real-world data to identify various issues and complaints that tinnitus patients and their significant others discuss in online communities. Some of the clusters identified here are novel (e.g., tinnitus timeline, interactions with people without tinnitus) and have not been much discussed in the tinnitus literature. The results suggest that individuals with tinnitus relay on social media for support and highlight the service delivery needs in providing social support through other means (e.g., support groups).
本研究旨在通过使用自然语言处理技术检查从 Reddit 社交媒体提取的大型数据集，来确定有关耳鸣的在线讨论中的关键主题。
从 Reddit 的应用程序编程接口中提取了 113,215 篇有关耳鸣的帖子的语料库。对数据进行重复项和无文本信息的帖子清理后，将样本减少到 101,905 篇帖子，然后使用开源的 IRaMuTeQ 软件对这些帖子进行聚类分析，根据文本的共现情况确定主要主题。这些聚类由一组耳鸣专家（=9 人）通过阅读每个聚类中的典型文本片段来命名。
聚类分析确定了 16 个独特的聚类，它们属于两个主题，分别命名为“耳鸣的原因和后果”和“耳鸣的管理和应对”。根据其特征，聚类被命名为：耳鸣时间线（10%）、耳鸣感知（9.7%）、医学触发因素和调节剂（8.8%）、听力研究（8.8%）、注意力和沉默（8.6%）、关于耳鸣的社交媒体帖子（7.4%）、听力保护（7.3%）、与听力保健提供者的互动（6.7%）、心理健康和应对（5.8%）、音乐聆听（5.7%）、治愈的希望（5.6%）、与无耳鸣的人互动（5.4%）、膳食补充剂和替代疗法（3.2%）、睡眠（3.9%）、饮食影响（1.7%）和关于耳鸣的写作以及对在线社区的感激（1.4%）。
尽管存在一些限制，但 Reddit 上的耳鸣帖子提供了丰富的真实世界数据，可以识别出耳鸣患者及其重要他人在在线社区中讨论的各种问题和抱怨。这里确定的一些聚类是新颖的（例如，耳鸣时间线、与无耳鸣的人互动），并且在耳鸣文献中讨论不多。结果表明，耳鸣患者依赖社交媒体寻求支持，并强调通过其他方式（例如支持小组）提供社会支持的服务提供需求。
