Twitter chatter predicts health insurance marketplace enrollment, study shows
An increase in Twitter sentiment (the positivity or negativity of tweets) is associated with an increase in state-level enrollment in the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health insurance marketplaces—a phenomenon that points to use of the social media platform as a real-time gauge of public opinion and provides a way for marketplaces to quickly identify enrollment changes and emerging issues. Although Twitter has been previously used to measure public perception on a range of health topics, this study, led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published online in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is the first to look at its relationship with the new national health insurance marketplace enrollment.