Gender differences in social media usage related to mental health and veterans’ topics among US military veterans: An exploratory analysis (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Women veterans face particular challenges in adjusting to civilian life and in recovering from the invisible wounds of war. Because of the significant gender imbalance of the (overwhelmingly male) veteran population, and because of the particularly gendered culture of both the military and many veteran service organizations (VSOs), many women veterans are reluctant to seek medical care, counseling, and peer support from the very organizations intended to serve them. Social media has allowed new forms of community- and help-seeking, especially among individuals who are less likely to seek care for various reasons. OBJECTIVE In this article, we ask whether there is evidence that women veterans are particularly likely to use social media for the purpose of seeking community and care. This would have important implications for how VSOs provide outreach and services to this uniquely vulnerable population. METHODS We apply natural language processing (NLP) and data visualization techniques to more than 3 million Tweets collected from 20,000 Twitter users. We present a series of exploratory analyses to examine the ways women veterans use social media compared to their male counterparts. RESULTS Women veterans use social media to seek social and community engagement and to find resources and support related to mental health and veterans’ topics significantly more frequently than their male counterparts. By contrast, male veterans tend to use social media to amplify political ideologies or to engage in partisan debate. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that VSOs must be systematically mindful of the gender makeup of their intended audiences when using social media for outreach or to promote services. Social media platforms may be particularly effective for reaching women veterans, and women veterans may be more likely to respond to outreach that specifically addresses the challenges veterans face. We highlight promising avenues for further research, and provide guidance concerning how VSOs can act on, test, and refine these observations in their own outreach efforts. CLINICALTRIAL n/a