title: Social Media Monitoring of Discrimination and HIV Testing in Brazil, 2014-2015.
abstract: Big data can be used to assess perceptions about public health issues. This study assessed social media data from Twitter to inform communication campaigns to promote HIV testing and reduce discrimination related to HIV/AIDS or towards key populations to the HIV epidemic, and its potential utility to evaluate such campaigns through HIV testing uptake. Tweets from Brazil were collected from January 2014 to March 2015 and filtered by four categories of keywords including discrimination, HIV prevention, HIV testing, and HIV campaigns. In total over 100,000 geo-located tweets were extracted and analyzed. A dynamic online dashboard updated daily allowed mapping trends, anomalies and influencers, and enabled its use for feedback to campaigns, including correcting misconceptions. These results encourage the use of social networking data for improved messaging in campaigns. Clinical HIV test data was collected monthly from the city of Curitiba and compared to the number of tweets mapped to the city showing a moderate positive correlation (r = 0.39). Results are limited due to the availability of the HIV testing data. The potential of social media as a proxy for HIV testing uptake needs further validation, which can only be done with higher frequency and higher spatial granularity of service delivery data, enabling comparisons with the social media data. Such timely information could empower early response immediate media messaging to support programmatic efforts, such as HIV prevention, testing, and treatment scale up.
authors.affiliation: UN Global Pulse, New York, USA.
authors.forename: René Clausen
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Nielsen
authors.affiliation: UN Global Pulse, New York, USA. miguel@unglobalpulse.org.
authors.forename: Miguel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Luengo-Oroz
authors.affiliation: UNAIDS, Brasília, Brazil.
authors.forename: Maeve B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Mello
authors.affiliation: Department of STI, AIDS and Viral Hepatitis, Brazilian Ministry of Health, Brasília, Brazil.
authors.forename: Josi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Paz
authors.affiliation: Department of STI, AIDS and Viral Hepatitis, Brazilian Ministry of Health, Brasília, Brazil.
authors.forename: Colin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pantin
authors.affiliation: UNAIDS Secretariat, 20 Avenue Appia, 1211, Geneva, Switzerland. erkkolat@unaids.org.
authors.forename: Taavi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Erkkola
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D040241:Social Marketing; D061108:Social Media / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D060756:Social Networking
keywords: Advocacy; Big data; Discrimination; HIV testing; Perceptions; Social media