Mining Social Media for Perceptions and Trends on HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis

Abstract

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) is an approach for preventing the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which entails the administration of antiretroviral medication to high-risk seronegative persons. If taken correctly, PrEP can reduce HIV infection risk by more than 90%. The aim of this study was to identify and examine PrEP-related perceptions and trends discussed on Twitter. Using open-source technologies, text-mining and interactive visualisation techniques, a comprehensive data gathering and analytics Web-based platform was developed to facilitate the study objectives. Our results demonstrate that monitoring of PrEP-related discussions on Twitter can be detected over time and valuable insights can be obtained concerning issues of PrEP awareness, expressed opinions, perceived barriers and key discussion points on its adoption. The proposed platform could support public-health professionals and policy makers in PrEP monitoring, facilitating informed decision making and strategy planning for efficient HIV combination prevention.