Tweets about obesity mostly negative, Donald Trump taking most flack: study

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Tweets about obesity are mostly negative - with Boris Johnson and Donald Trump taking the most criticism, reveals new research.

The findings showed that Twitter activity "spiked" around the time of "significant" political events.

These included the launch of an obesity campaign by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and comments about Donald Trump’s weight when he was US President.

Researcher Dr. Jorge Correia, of University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland, said: “Obesity can lead to serious physical, mental, and social health problems and its prevalence is increasing worldwide among people of all age groups.

“Understanding the public’s attitudes to, and perceptions of, obesity is key to the formulation of effective health policies, prevention strategies, and treatment approaches."

“In this study, we have leveraged the wealth of information available on Twitter to explore the sentiments of the public, celebrities and other influential people and important organizations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

Software was used to download obesity-related tweets from Twitter.

Cutting-edge AI methods were then used to perform sentiment analysis and classify the tweets into positive, negative and neutral sentiments. Modeling techniques were used to identify the major topics being discussed.

A total of 25,580 tweets about obesity posted between December 2019 to December 2021 were analyzed.

The sentiment analysis revealed a significantly higher percentage of tweets (72.97 percent) represented negative sentiments, followed by neutral (18.78 percent) and positive (8.25 percent).

Spikes in Twitter activity were associated with "significant" political events such as when the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US, Nancy Pelosi, described then-President Trump as “morbidly obese” in May 2020.

A total of 1,003 tweets were posted on that topic over several days, with around 94 percent of them negative in sentiment.

Dr. Correia said: “The negative portrayal of obesity by influential politicians and celebrities in may increase stigma against people living with obesity, and also harm public health by spreading misinformation.”

The launch of an obesity strategy in the UK on July 27, 2020, by then PM Johnson, attracted a lot of criticism from the public. Around 73.9 percent of the tweets about the campaign during the spike were negative.

The 25,580 tweets included in the analysis covered 243 topics, including childhood obesity, COVID-19 vaccination, racism and high obesity rates among minorities, smoking, illegal substance use and alcohol consumption among people with obesity, and surgical treatments.

The largest number of tweets related to the issue of COVID-19 vaccination for people with obesity, followed by Pelosi’s comments on Trump.

The third largest group 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 obese people and about how people living with obesity are responsible for their weight.

The researchers say that their findings emphasize the need to view obesity through a "holistic" lens.

Dr. Correia said: “We need investments in various aspects of healthcare for obesity in order to achieve better health outcomes for the population.

"This includes improving health information regarding obesity, promoting awareness and reducing stigma, as well as the development of effective interventions."

He added: "Campaigns should be run on platforms like Twitter to improve the information about obesity available to the public.

"This could be done with partnerships between the social media platforms, public and third sector organizations.”

The findings are due to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Dublin, Ireland, next week.