What social media analyses can tell us about Ghanaian women's concerns during pregnancy.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Social media platforms are used by over 4.9 billion people for networking and community building, as well as for healthcare information seeking and decision-making. Most studies investigating the utilization of social media during pregnancy have focused on high-income countries, despite the surge in social media utilization globally. In this study, we analyzed how pregnant women in Ghana, West Africa, utilize Facebook to inform decision-making on their most salient pregnancy concerns.

Methods

We utilized machine learning techniques (Web Scraping and Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to mine and analyze posts from the Ghana-based MidWife Sally Pregnancy School Facebook group between August 16, 2020 and April 29, 2023. Posts were extracted, cleaned, and analyzed using

SUBMITTER: Anto-Ocrah M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11865226 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature