Social Media Perspectives on Over-The-Counter Hearing Aids: Sentiment and Thematic Analysis of Twitter (X) Data.

Objective: To assess public perspective on over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids through social media data.

Methods: Twitter (X)'s Application Program Interface was utilized to collect English-language tweets mentioning OTC hearing aids between January 2019 and October 2022. Sentiment analysis was conducted using the Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner, categorizing tweets as positive, neutral, or negative. Main outcomes and measures were average compound sentiment scores. Joinpoint analysis was used to evaluate changes in sentiment scores over time. Two independent raters categorized account type and tweets into categories determined by thematic analysis.

Results: A total of 8912 tweets were included. The tweets were categorized as Economy, Political, Logistics, Information, and Other based on thematic analysis. Overall mean (SD) compound sentiment score (range: -1 to +1) was weakly positive at 0.15 (0.40). The total number of tweets increased significantly after August 2022, with 331 tweets in Q2 of 2022 and 2110 tweets in Q3 of 2022. There were no significant changes in sentiment scores over the study period. Economy received the highest average compound sentiment score of 0.21 (0.39), followed by Political 0.18 (0.46), Logistics 0.16 (0.41), Other 0.14 (0.39), and lastly Information 0.13 (0.36).

Conclusion: This study demonstrated an increase in public awareness regarding OTC hearing aids in social media; although the sentiment toward them remained unchanged, reflecting mixed opinions on their benefits and challenges. Our findings highlight the need for more transparent and educational information, particularly given the increasing confusion accompanying the growing awareness.