Exploring the Public Opinion on Celebrity Fad Diets: Twitter Sentiment and Netnographic Analysis
Background: Celebrity fad diets have garnered significant attention and public interest in recent years, with many individuals seeking to emulate the seemingly flawless physiques of their favorite stars. These diets often gain popularity through social media platforms, particularly Twitter, where users engage in discussions, debates, and promotions of various diet trends. As public opinion and attitudes towards these diets play a crucial role in shaping their prevalence and effectiveness, understanding the sentiment and discourse surrounding celebrity fad diets on Twitter becomes a motivating topic.
Objective: The primary objective of the study is to analyze Indonesian's public discussions surrounding celebrity fad diets on twitter social media using netnographic and sentiment analysis of tweets.
Methods: This research used mixed methods approach with both qualitative and quantitative methods to find the public sentiments of the 5 chosen diets. The data were obtained through snscrape from GitHub, a Python-based tool, which enables users to access various types of Twitter data such as user profiles, hashtags, live tweets, top tweets, users, single or threaded tweets, list posts, communities, and trends. Each tweet then compiled into one database and cleaned based on inclusion criteria namely, included the keywords and its translation in Indonesian Language, has correlation to the topic of popular diets, not a promotional or advertisement content, affiliated to one or more celebrities and popular persons account in twitter, and showing interaction proved by the number of retweet, reaction, or reply.
Results: Positive sentiment was found to be more prevalent than negative sentiment over the years, and there was an increase in the number of tweets each year. Intermittent fasting emerged as the most discussed diet on social media, likely due to its resemblance to fasting practices observed by Indonesia's Muslim population. On the other hand, the Atkins diet was the least talked-about, possibly because of its complex nature.
Conclusions: The research highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased health consciousness on the surge in tweets during 2020-2022, and offers valuable insights into cultural and religious influences on discussions about intermittent fasting. The prevalence of discussions about the Ketogenic diet and Very Low-Calorie Diet in the context of Indonesian culture and K-Pop culture underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of these diets and their potential implications on health. Future research should consider diverse data sources, expand sample sizes, and collaborate with experts to gain a more comprehensive understanding of public opinions on diets.
Keywords : Opinion, Celebrity, Fad Diets, Twitter, Sentiment, Netnographic
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