Original articleWhat do people post on social media relative to low back pain? A content analysis of Australian data
Section snippets
Background
Low back pain is the main contributor to the global disability burden (Hoy et al., 2014). Over the last decade, low back pain has consistently been the leading cause of disability worldwide (GBD 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators, 2020; Hartvigsen et al., 2018). To stem the rising cost of low back pain, 66 experts from 24 different countries formed the Global Spine Care Initiative (GSCI) to define principles for the delivery of evidence-based care for spine pain and disability globally (
Ethics and safety
This study was approved by our institutions Human Research Ethics Committee prior to data collection (approval number 180098).
Researcher characteristics
The analysis was conducted by a team of authors interested in providing education to treat low back pain. The authors include physiotherapists, physiotherapy researchers, a public health researcher, a qualitative researcher, a rheumatologist, an orthopaedic surgeon, and a psychologist. This study was part of the first author's (EO) doctoral studies. EO is a
Data collection
The data collection period was from June 18th, 2018, to August 22nd, 2018 (66 days).
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 describes the sample. We were not able to access any posts from Facebook due to privacy restrictions. The average number of responses to a status broadcast about low back pain was 3 (standard deviation(sd) 3). One status broadcast generated 167 responses, so this data was not included in Table 1 and analysed separately (Appendix C).
Social influence
In total, the status broadcasters had 4,713,584 followers. On average,
Main findings
Our analysis yielded two core themes that highlight several important findings. The first theme, “Hear my pain”, suggests that people with low back pain appear to use social media as an outlet for support, that is, to seek validation and to share their experiences. The second theme, “I feel for you”, suggests that social media is used to share support for people with low back pain. A third main finding relates to what was unsaid, in that there were no public responses to 76% of the status
Conclusions
Posts on social media concerning low back pain are most commonly seeking validation. Where there are responses, the responses typically express sympathy or a shared experience, but in most cases, there are no responses at all. These findings provide insights to improve clinical communication to promote patient-centred care.
Funding
This research project did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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