I’m guessing you’ve heard about social media’s promise for public health? We’ve been talking about this for years now. We’ve been busily incorporating social media in to every health communication and social marketing plan and trying to measure the awareness and behavior change effects.
We’ve seen many great examples.
I mean, more than 1.2 million people currently follow CDC Emergency on Twitter, and that momentum began with interest from consumers during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak. That’s something, right? That’s huge!
Among other fact bits, from Pew Internet, we’ve learned that having a chronic illness (once online) is associated positively with working on a blog and participating in online health discussions.
Where are we, then, when it comes to social media’s affects on health awareness and behavior change as part of public health campaigns? Where are the results?
Today “…as yet we have no proof of principle.“
I borrow this quote from an excellent recent literature review conducted by the Peel region Canadian public health department on effectiveness of the use of social media for public health campaigns. I think the crew did quite the bang up job on this paper. The review of 39 articles and studies covering evidence behind domestic and Canadian public health campaigns incorporating social media found:
- Research to date has focused on potential for learning and behavior change. This is largely because of a lag in the research cycle as compared to the rapid speed of social platform development.
- Few peer-reviewed studies have tested social media interventions for desired outcomes, such as adoption of behaviors or even increased learning tied to social media.
- In the several original research studies with evaluative components, results were confounded because researchers couldn’t isolate social media from other communication tactics.
- The authors noted that even in the studies which attempted to evaluate behavior change, results may not be generalizeable from one health issue to another or in a different context.
These MIT researchers told us we can have better health through social networking. I see this referenced quite a bit. This study found that participants were more likely to sign up for an online health information forum through smaller networks of closer contacts than through larger networks of weak contacts. Its self-described limitations: it did not measure actual behavior change, simply likeliness to sign up for a network based on reinforcement from close online friends.
So many questions remain. Does social media work in certain situations, with certain audiences, for certain health outcomes? There’s not one study that I’ve found that shows this is the case, just yet. What about for improved knowledge and awareness but not for behavioral change?
Much of the success in public health we’ve seen were in crises – take 2009 H1N1 flu. Do differences exist in social media’s affects on public information gathering and action during health crises as compared to long-term chronic disease prevention campaigns?
I’m working through these issues because I’ve got my communication thesis topic idea due in 3 months and I’ve yet to come up with any solid research questions I can actually test.
Any one know of any other studies on this topic? Any one else working on one?
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