TY - GEN

T1 - Doctors about Covid-19, about Us and Themselves: Web communications of Medical Communities VKontakte

AU - Гуриева, Светлана Дзахотовна

AU - Мальцева, Анна Васильевна

AU - Шилкина, Наталья Егоровна

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - The article deals with web-communications of doctors, medical students, and medical volunteers at the most popular groups of social media VKontakte. The empirical base of the study was the specialized communities: "Overheard by medics", "I am a medical student", "Medical volunteers. Moscow" and "United Medicine". The goal was to identify the topics and tensions of medical forums in the post-pandemic environment and the danger of a new pandemic. The topics of medical forum messages were detailed and structured in two stages. At the first stage, using automated probabilistic topic modeling, medical communication topics were identified (symptoms and treatment; education and employment; volunteering; jokes). At the second stage, in the identified topics, with the help of sociological expert analysis, key lexemes of action (“learn”, “treat”, “save”), identity (“I am a doctor”, “I am a volunteer”), as well as emotionality in the meaning of “good” (“excellent”, “effective”) and in the sense of “bad” (“complaint”, “threat”). Conclusions were drawn: 1) the Covid-19 pandemic has strengthened digital contacts in the medical environment and currently the development of online medical communications has the prospect of reaching a mass addressee; 2) the consequences of Covid-19 and new biothreats are increasing communication tensions in the medical community; 4) currently, medical web communications on VKontakte are a professional channel not intended for a mass audience; 5) medical volunteering, which developed during the pandemic, remains active and is in high demand; 6) analysis of medical web communications can be an additional source of knowledge about the situation in different areas of healthcare “here and now.”

AB - The article deals with web-communications of doctors, medical students, and medical volunteers at the most popular groups of social media VKontakte. The empirical base of the study was the specialized communities: "Overheard by medics", "I am a medical student", "Medical volunteers. Moscow" and "United Medicine". The goal was to identify the topics and tensions of medical forums in the post-pandemic environment and the danger of a new pandemic. The topics of medical forum messages were detailed and structured in two stages. At the first stage, using automated probabilistic topic modeling, medical communication topics were identified (symptoms and treatment; education and employment; volunteering; jokes). At the second stage, in the identified topics, with the help of sociological expert analysis, key lexemes of action (“learn”, “treat”, “save”), identity (“I am a doctor”, “I am a volunteer”), as well as emotionality in the meaning of “good” (“excellent”, “effective”) and in the sense of “bad” (“complaint”, “threat”). Conclusions were drawn: 1) the Covid-19 pandemic has strengthened digital contacts in the medical environment and currently the development of online medical communications has the prospect of reaching a mass addressee; 2) the consequences of Covid-19 and new biothreats are increasing communication tensions in the medical community; 4) currently, medical web communications on VKontakte are a professional channel not intended for a mass audience; 5) medical volunteering, which developed during the pandemic, remains active and is in high demand; 6) analysis of medical web communications can be an additional source of knowledge about the situation in different areas of healthcare “here and now.”

KW - COVID

KW - medical volunteers

KW - social media

KW - prothematic modeling

KW - medical forums

KW - COVID

KW - medical forums

KW - topicc modeling

KW - social media

KW - medical volunteers

M3 - Conference contribution

BT - сборник III Международной научно-практической конференции «COVID-19: Экономические и социальные импликации эволюции вируса» (RTCOV 2023)

PB - SciTePress

ER -