As modern society continues to organize around a digital, connected way of life, information from our daily interactions and exposures are now measured, recorded, and memorialized in ways previously unimaginable. This tapestry of information includes data from social media or electronic tools, such as websites and applications, that enable users to create, share, and exchange content.1 Twitter is one such social networking service whose 310 million active users post short public messages known as Tweets.
In this issue of JAMA Cardiology, Sinnenberg and colleagues2 explore the characteristics of Twitter users and Tweets associated with cardiovascular disease. They found a large volume of Tweets (4.9 million) on cardiovascular disease and were able to characterize tone, style, and perspective of these Tweets, as well as some basic demographics of the users posting them. Most notably, Sinnenberg and colleagues found that Tweet volume and content were temporally associated with news events that were thematically connected with cardiovascular disease.
Via Giuseppe Fattori