The cuts in Health and the situation of the health system are common topics in the social debate. In person and also online. Social networks such as Twitter are used to being for many citizens and also politicians and institutions the favorite space to launch complaints, extol benefits or claim. Under the title Health in Spain. Analysis of the social conversation, the latest installment of the LLYC / La Vanguardia Observatory, carried out by the consultancy Llorente y Cuenca, has x-rayed from 3.15 million messages and 247,000 profiles the conversation around Health that has taken place in Twitter in the last year: from February 1, 2022 to February 13, 2023. A period especially marked by strikes in the Madrid health system. The conflict has not escaped debate, and perhaps for this reason Madrid concentrates the largest volume of health debate on the social network. All the topics discussed have been negative, but the deterioration of healthcare monopolizes a “highly politicized” conversation.
The indefinite strike of Madrid primary care in November for the remodeling of the extra-hospital emergency system and the massive demonstration that followed have put healthcare in Madrid at the forefront and have made it the community that concentrates a more important part of the health debate, according to data from the Observatory.
And it is that “social conversation is a loudspeaker of the discomfort for Health”, points out Ibo Sanz, author of the study. In this sense, all the issues that deal with deterioration in health, such as social discontent (13%), the collapse of health and cuts (6%), the shortage of personnel and resources (3%) and the deterioration and Closure of centers (2%) monopolize a good part of the dialogue on Twitter (24%), leaving concern about the pandemic in a second or third place (5%).
There is no doubt that the health debate “is a highly politicized conversation,” says Sanz, who points out that health is an issue that “mobilizes” especially the progressive electorate. Thus, the progressive health conversation represents 52% of the profiles that speak. On the other hand, only 21% of conservative profiles enter the health debate. Sanz clarifies, however, that from this analysis of the conversation on social networks it cannot be extracted, “because it is not observed” in this way, that doctors are politicized.
While the conservative profiles criticize the government’s management and that the demonstrations are “political acts”, the progressive profiles denounce the collapse of emergencies, call to attend the demonstrations and criticize the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso; they also echo extreme cases or share the cost of treatments and dedicate space to thanking public health professionals.
The profiles related to the PSOE and the Government reaffirm the management and question the model proposed by the PP and the community that represents the specialists and unions (which represents only 6% of the messages) try to narrate the reality they face hospitals and denounce the “lies” spread by the Community of Madrid.
The pandemic has been left behind for many. Something that is also seen on Twitter, where it has ceased to be one of the points that most worries the citizen. Perhaps as a consequence of this “we have become comfortable in our well-being”. In this sense, Ibo Sanz points out, “the loneliness of the toilets” has become clear, who are no longer supported as at the beginning of the covid health crisis.
