Weight of Words Unveiled Towards Obesity
Study on Twitter reveals prevailing negativity surrounding obesity in more than 25,000 posts, which is to be presented at the upcoming European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Dublin, Ireland (17-20 May).
The findings showed that about 72.97 percent of tweets represented negative sentiments, followed by neutral (18.78 percent) and positive (8.25 percent).
‘Analysis of over 25,000 Twitter posts reveals predominantly negative sentiment towards obesity.’
The analysis, by researchers in Switzerland and the UK, included 25,580 tweets about obesity that were posted between December 2019 to December 2021 and were extracted and analyzed using artificial intelligence.
Twitterverse's Perception
The tweets covered 243 topics including childhood obesity, Covid-19 vaccination, racism and high obesity rates among minorities, smoking, illicit substance use, and alcohol consumption among people with obesity, environmental risk factors for obesity (such as unavailability of green spaces), polycystic ovary syndrome and surgical treatments."Obesity can lead to serious physical, mental, and social health problems and its prevalence is increasing worldwide among people of all age groups," said researcher Dr Jorge Correia, of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, Nutrition and Therapeutic Patient Education, at the University Hospitals of Geneva.
Further, the team linked spikes in Twitter activity with significant political events such as when the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US, Nancy Pelosi, described the then-president, Donald Trump, as "morbidly obese".
A total of 1,003 tweets were posted on this topic over several days. Around 94 percent of the tweets were negative in sentiment.
Examining the Negative Perception of Obesity
The largest number of tweets related to the issue of Covid vaccination for people with obesity, followed by Nancy Pelosi's comments on Donald Trump being "morbidly obese".The third largest group of tweets wasn't made up of tweets from the public but of tweets from research teams about their work on obesity.
Racism towards Black people was the fourth most tweeted topic. In addition, negative tweets often talked about increased hospitalizations and death due to Covid-19 among people with obesity and about how people living with obesity are responsible for their weight.
"The negative portrayal of obesity by influential politicians and celebrities may increase stigma against people living with obesity, and also harm public health by spreading misinformation," Dr Correia said.
The team recommended using the platform to make information about obesity available to the public.
Source: IANS