In January 2016, the UK’s four Chief Medical Officers released a public consultation regarding updated guidelines for low-risk alcohol consumption. Online search behaviour suggests that the announcement of new alcohol guidelines generated awareness and interest. But what was the nature of the public response?
Our study, published in BMJ Open, examined responses to the updated guidelines using comments made on Twitter. We aimed to identify the source, sentiment, and themes present in over 3,000 tweets made in the week following the announcement of the new guidelines (January 8th -14th, 2016).