Telehealth Talk on Reddit: Understanding how Language Use about Telemedicine Evolved throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 health pandemic acted as a punctuated event that spurred rapid change in healthcare delivery, pushing us to adopt new socio-cultural norms and ways of communicating. The pandemic also altered several long-standing structures within healthcare organizations. To better understand peoples’ perceptions of how the pandemic shifted technological structures within healthcare, this study examines a telemedicine (TM) Reddit forum. Analyzing language use on Reddit offered a bottom-up means of examining the public’s feelings, understandings, and conceptualizations of TM. Studying language use provides rich insight into how people experience and make sense of the world around them. We specifically examined three time periods: (1): prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, (2), the two years at the center of the outbreak, wherein TM coverage increased—high-risk COVID, and (3) the point at which COVID-19 community risk levels largely diminished —low-risk COVID. Using LIWC, we studied around 1500 conversations posted in the TM forum from 2015 to 2022. Results reveal how people’s language use and emotions surrounding TM meaningfully shifted over-time, along with the pandemic stages. Specifically, negative emotion language significantly increased and positive emotion language significantly decreased during Time 3—low-risk COVID. Use of body and health words increased throughout the time periods, and there were no significantly differences in cognitive processing words use—which were used very frequently across all time periods. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.

新冠疫情作为一场断点式突发公共卫生事件，推动了医疗服务供给模式的快速转型，促使社会采纳全新的社会文化规范与沟通范式。此次疫情同时重塑了医疗保健机构内多项长期存续的运行架构。为深入探究公众对疫情如何重塑医疗领域技术架构的认知，本研究聚焦Reddit平台上的远程医疗（telemedicine, TM）论坛展开分析。对Reddit平台语言使用情况的剖析，为从底层视角审视公众对远程医疗的情感、认知与概念建构提供了可行路径。对语言使用的研究，能够为理解人们如何体验周遭世界并赋予其意义提供丰富的洞察。本研究重点考察了三个时间阶段：(1) 新冠疫情暴发前；(2) 疫情暴发核心期的两年，此阶段远程医疗相关报道量显著上升，对应高风险新冠疫情阶段；(3) 新冠社区传播风险大幅降低的阶段，对应低风险新冠疫情阶段。本研究借助LIWC工具，对2015年至2022年间该论坛发布的约1500条讨论帖开展分析。研究结果揭示了公众围绕远程医疗的语言使用模式与情感表达，如何随疫情阶段的推移发生显著变化。具体而言，在阶段3（低风险新冠疫情阶段），负面情感类语言的使用量显著提升，正面情感类语言的使用量则明显下降。身体与健康相关词汇的使用量在各阶段均呈上升趋势；认知加工类词汇的使用在所有阶段均极为频繁，未出现显著差异。本研究同时给出了相应的理论与实践启示。