Kayo Takumi, Uneda Kazushi, Suzuki Masao
Department of Kampo Medicine, Aizu Medical Center, Fukushima Medical University, Aizuwakamatsu, JPN.
Cureus. 2024 Feb 26;16(2):e54928. doi: 10.7759/cureus.54928. eCollection 2024 Feb.
Background With the growth of social media, there has been an increase in health-related studies utilizing data obtained from such sites and applications. Although acupuncture is used as a complementary alternative medicine worldwide, there is little research on acupuncture utilizing social media data. This study investigates the topics related to acupuncture on Twitter, currently known as X, in English and Japanese. Methods We collected tweets containing the English word "acupuncture" and its Japanese equivalent using Twitter's application programming interface from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022. After extracting the top 50 frequently occurring words from the collected tweet texts separately for each language, we conducted a co-occurrence network analysis for those words, in order to evaluate the patterns of their occurrence. Results A total of 70,435 English tweets from 41,939 users and 188,671 Japanese tweets from 81,093 users were analyzed after excluding retweets and duplicate tweets. The co-occurrence network analysis revealed that topics related to pain, other complementary and alternative medicines, and acupuncture-related experiences were common in both languages. However, explanatory topics such as needle use, Chinese medicine, and body points were specific to English tweets, while those about beauty care were specific to Japanese tweets. Conclusion The number of tweets regarding acupuncture and the number of users who posted them were both higher in Japanese than in English. Some acupuncture topics were common in both languages, while other topics were specific to each language. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into understanding information about acupuncture on social media.
背景 随着社交媒体的发展，利用从此类网站和应用程序获取的数据进行的与健康相关的研究有所增加。尽管针灸在全球范围内被用作补充替代医学，但利用社交媒体数据进行的针灸研究却很少。本研究调查了英文和日文推特（现称为X）上与针灸相关的话题。方法 我们使用推特的应用程序编程接口，在2022年1月1日至2022年12月31日期间收集了包含英文单词“acupuncture”及其日文对应词 的推文。在分别从每种语言收集的推文文本中提取出现频率最高的前50个单词后，我们对这些单词进行了共现网络分析，以评估它们的出现模式。结果 在排除转发和重复推文后，共分析了来自41,939名用户的70,435条英文推文和来自81,093名用户的188,671条日文推文。共现网络分析显示，与疼痛、其他补充替代医学以及针灸相关经历相关的话题在两种语言中都很常见。然而，诸如针的使用、中医和穴位等解释性话题在英文推文中较为特定，而关于美容护理的话题在日文推文中较为特定。结论 关于针灸的推文数量和发布推文的用户数量在日语中均高于英语。一些针灸话题在两种语言中都很常见，而其他话题则特定于每种语言。本研究的结果为理解社交媒体上有关针灸的信息提供了有价值的见解。
