%0 Journal Article
%@ 1438-8871
%I JMIR Publications Inc.
%V 17
%N 8
%P e194
%T A Study of the Demographics of Web-Based Health-Related Social Media Users
%A Sadah,Shouq A
%A Shahbazi,Moloud
%A Wiley,Matthew T
%A Hristidis,Vagelis
%+ Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, Riverside, 351 Winston Chung Hall, 900 University Ave, Riverside, CA, 92521, United States, 1 9517565691, ssada003@cs.ucr.edu
%K online social media
%K demographics
%K health forums
%K health care disparity
%K drug reviews
%D 2015
%7 06.08.2015
%9 Original Paper
%J J Med Internet Res
%G English
%X Background: The rapid spread of Web-based social media in recent years has impacted how patients share health-related information. However, little work has studied the demographics of these users. Objective: Our aim was to study the demographics of users who participate in health-related Web-based social outlets to identify possible links to health care disparities. Methods: We analyze and compare three different types of health-related social outlets: (1) general Web-based social networks, Twitter and Google+, (2) drug review websites, and (3) health Web forums. We focus on the following demographic attributes: age, gender, ethnicity, location, and writing level. We build and evaluate domain-specific classifiers to infer missing data where possible. The estimated demographic statistics are compared against various baselines, such as Internet and social networks usage of the population. Results: We found that (1) drug review websites and health Web forums are dominated by female users, (2) the participants of health-related social outlets are generally older with the exception of the 65+ years bracket, (3) blacks are underrepresented in health-related social networks, (4) users in areas with better access to health care participate more in Web-based health-related social outlets, and (5) the writing level of users in health-related social outlets is significantly lower than the reading level of the population. Conclusions: We identified interesting and actionable disparities in the participation of various demographic groups to various types of health-related social outlets. These disparities are significantly distinct from the disparities in Internet usage or general social outlets participation. 
%M 26250986
%R 10.2196/jmir.4308
%U http://www.jmir.org/2015/8/e194/
%U https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.4308
%U http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26250986