Temporal Community Structure Patterns in Diabetes Social Networks

The growing amount of data in healthcare social media requires innovative new analysis methods, which are elementary to exploration of relationship dynamics, community formation, sustenance and dissolution, in a bid to understand the new roles social media play in healthcare. In this work we use network analysis to explore the temporal nature of two large diabetes social networks, with a view to enhancing our knowledge of the development of sub-community structures and cohesion factors. Current results reveal how diabetes online communities are very dynamic, suggesting diabetes patients are usually actively engaged for periods of less than a year, typically immediately following diagnosis. The presented empirical evidence inform future online intervention strategies for promoting health behavior and lifestyle changes among people with diabetes.