What are the characteristics of highly disseminated public health-related tweets?

Unlike traditional mass media, peer interaction between individuals is of critical importance in the dissemination mechanisms for social media. There is emerging interest in the possible novel application of social media in disseminating public health information or messages. In this paper, we analyze tweet and re-tweet behaviour in the context of Australian public health-related micro-blog posts to provide preliminary insights into the characteristics of widely disseminated tweets (including characteristics of re-tweeting accounts). In this way we also consider the nature and role of human computer-mediated interactions in affecting the level of dissemination of Twitter-based public health messages.