J Korean Acad Oral Health.  2017 Jun;41(2):154-161. 10.11149/jkaoh.2017.41.2.154.

Changes in public recognition of parabens on twitter and the research status of parabens related to toothpaste

• Oh HJ
• Jeon JG

• KMID: 2389101
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.11149/jkaoh.2017.41.2.154

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in public recognition of parabens on Twitter and the research status of parabens related to toothpaste.
METHODS
Tweet information between 2010 and October 2016 was collected by an automatic web crawler and examined according to tweet frequency, key words (2012-October 2016), and issue tweet detection analyses to reveal changes in public recognition of parabens on Twitter. To investigate the research status of parabens related to toothpaste, queries such as "paraben,""paraben and toxicity,""paraben and (toothpastes or dentifrices)," and "paraben and (toothpastes or dentifrices) and toxicity" were used.
RESULTS
The number of tweets concerning parabens sharply increased when parabens in toothpaste emerged as a social issue (October 2014), and decreased from 2015 onward. However, toothpaste and its related terms were continuously included in the core key words extracted from tweets from 2015. They were not included in key words before 2014, indicating that the emergence of parabens in toothpaste as a social issue plays an important role in public recognition of parabens in toothpaste. The issue tweet analysis also confirmed the change in public recognition of parabens in toothpaste. Despite the expansion of public recognition of parabens in toothpaste, there are only seven research articles on the topic in PubMed.
CONCLUSIONS
The general public clearly recognized parabens in toothpaste after emergence of parabens in toothpaste as a social issue. Nevertheless, the scientific information on parabens in toothpaste is very limited, suggesting that the efforts of dental scientists are required to expand scientific knowledge related to parabens in oral hygiene measures.

Keyword

Parabens; Recognition; Toothpastes; Twitter

MeSH Terms

Oral Hygiene
Parabens*
Toothpastes*
Parabens
Toothpastes

Figure

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  Fig. 1 A model for analysis on public recognition on parabens in twitter.

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  Fig. 2 An example of tweets in twitte.r

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  Fig. 3 Extraction of key words from mention in tweets.

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  Fig. 4 Changes over time in the number of tweets erlated to parabens.

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