Paper Title
Health Promotion on Social Media
Abstract
Information on social media spreads like a wildfire, hence, health organizations are increasingly using social media to disseminate health information. This paper presents a pilot study and aims to find- how individuals are exploiting health information available on social media? and, how are they contributing in health promotion on social media? The research method used here is a self-administered questionnaire survey. The findings reveal that, for health information exploitation majority of the respondents have a preference for- images and videos over text and other forms, both Facebook and YouTube over other kinds of social media, health organization pages over health related groups and video channels (this information can be used by health organizations to promote health information effectively); whereas for sharing of health information the individuals share it almost equally in the three forms but with slight preference for text form and preference for Facebook over YouTube or other kinds of social media. The findings reported are important as they answer how individuals are viewing and sharing health information, rather than how many are doing so or which health topics.
Index Terms- health; health promotion; social media.