Dementia Research on Facebook and Twitter: Current Practice and Challenges

Background: Social media is a powerful tool for engaging diverse audiences in dementia research. However, there is little data summarizing current content exchange in this context. Objective: To inform ethical dementia research engagement on social media, we characterized current practices by analyzing public social media posts. Methods: We retrieved Facebook (2-year period, N = 7,896) and Twitter (1-year period, N = 9,323) posts containing dementia research-related keywords using manual and machine learning-based search strategies. We performed qualitative and quantitative content and sentiment analyses on random samples (10%) of the posts. Results: Top Facebook users were advocacy (45%) and health organizations (25%). On Twitter, academics/researchers were the largest user group. Prevention was the most frequently coded theme (Facebook 30%; Twitter 26%), followed by treatment (Facebook 15%; Twitter 18%). Diagnostics had the highest Facebook engagement. Sharing knowledge was the primary form of content exchange (Facebook 63%; Twitter 80%). Most shared journal articles were peer-reviewed and open access. Emotional tone was overall more positive on Facebook. Justice was a prominent ethics topic regarding inequalities related to identity and intersecting modes of marginalization in dementia research. Conclusion: The findings indicate the importance of social media as an engagement tool of current topics in health research and reveal areas of potential for increased engagement. These data can inform consensus-based best practices for ethical social media application in dementia research.