HIV/AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals: A Public Sentiment Analysis of World AIDS Day Twitter Chat

The Millennium Development Goals stimulated the belief in an AIDS-free generation and an end to the pandemic. Our study explored public sentiment on HIV/AIDS. Tweets were collected during a live three-hour, Twitter chat by ABC News' chief health editor; on World AIDS Days 2013. Content mining was conducted. Tweet topics were identified using n-gram based natural language analytic process. Aggregated Tweets were summarized. Hot topics discussed were visualized. Participant locations were also geo-mapped. Prevention, treatment, resources, vaccine, stigma and an AIDS free generation were identified as the most frequently tweeted topics. Our study systematically summarized and visualized HIV/AIDS-related tweets. Results indicate how twitter can serve as a valuable resource for communication and insight into perspectives. In the post-2015 agenda, understanding public sentiment is vital. Perceptions can motivate stakeholders to meet the needs of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.