In the early online issue of the journal Epilepsy and Behavior, Doctors McNeill and colleagues from Dalhousie University Health Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia, provide a brief snapshot of how epilepsy is portrayed in the world of Twitter social media.  The investigator analyzed 1712 tweets collected over a 48-hour period containing the word seizure to establish a classification system; then they reviewed 10,662 tweets, originally collected over a seven-day period in April, 2011.  The Twitter search for seizure yielded 6706 results, whereas the search for seizures produced 3956 tweets.  The investigators found that the predominant way in which epilepsy and seizure tweets were categorized were primarily as either metaphors, personal accounts, or informative tweets.  Tweets related to either making fun or joking about seizures accounted for 9%.  Moreover, the authors found that almost 41% of all seizure-related tweets were either disparaging or derogatory in nature.  The researchers further concluded that although Twitter has the power to positively impact how epilepsy and seizures are perceived; instead, the stigma of epilepsy appears to be perpetuated.  They suggested and concluded that a better job needs to be done to alter the perception of seizures and epilepsy on the Twitter social site.

This is an interesting study, giving us a brief glimpse of how epilepsy is faring in the world of social media.  Similar to other studies that  have addressed epilepsy’s portrayal on either YouTube or other versions of popular online media, epilepsy has not made a positive mark.  This study further underscores that so much more public education is needed in order to change one’s viewpoint on this condition.