What are people saying on social networking sites about the Australian alcohol consumption guidelines?

Abstract

Posts provide valuable feedback during public consultation for health guidelines

Guidelines provide important information on key health behaviours that can influence the population, with public consultation forming an important part of guideline development. Public consultation provides transparency, while improving the quality, legitimacy and acceptability of guidelines to the public.1 Although the public are encouraged to provide formal feedback, they may also discuss and provide valuable feedback on popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Reddit. Social networking sites are universal, with 5.8 million Australians using Twitter and 110 000 using Reddit each month. Given that a number of these posts are publicly available, they can be used to answer research questions and track health behaviours, and may be an informative source of feedback on health guidelines during public consultation.