Digital inclusion: A mixed-method study of user behavior and content on Twitter

Abstract

Objective This study is the first to explore user behavior and characterize the content shared about digital inclusion on Twitter. Methods This mixed-methods research consists of 14,000 tweets featuring the hashtag “#digitalinclusion,” posted on Twitter over 15 months. A machine learning technique, latent Dirichlet allocation, was utilized to discover abstract topics within the tweets statistically. The algorithm identified important keywords and text associated with each topic by modeling the underlying word co-occurrence patterns in the dataset. A manual qualitative content analysis was applied to the qualitative data (1000 tweets). Results Tweets containing #digitalinclusion are driven by four motives: 1) warning against the risks of digital exclusion; 2) tweets that promote actions to increase digital inclusion; 3) tweets that call for others to take action to improve digitalization; and 4) tweets that are neutral but fuel the debate by being active. Quantitative analysis revealed that users discussing digital inclusion come from various continents, including the USA, Europe, Africa, and Asia. There were 3931 unique user accounts, with individuals posting between one and 368 tweets. Approximately half of the tweets contained some embedded media. Conclusion The study concludes that digital inclusion is a subject that engages Twitter users worldwide. Tweets that were associated with community and local initiatives and sustainable development had the highest engagement in terms of the number of retweets and likes. The interpretation is that digital inclusion is crucial for achieving equity in living conditions and enhancing access to health information and services. While initiatives to increase digital inclusion are underway, Twitter users call for more efforts to prevent growing digital exclusion. Twitter, as a social media platform, is valuable for studying the motivations that drive digital inclusion and help counter digital exclusion.