Mobile Media and Public Health: An Evaluation of Personal Public Service Announcements to Promote HIV Testing

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  Cell phones are already ubiquitous and the technology they use is rapidly becoming more sophisticated with the introduction of “smartphones.”  The potential for health communication and marketing is intriguing.  The University of Georgia in collaboration with CDC and Verizon produced eight short video messages encouraging HIV testing and use of “KNOWIT” a web database of testing sites.  This presentation describes the evaluation of the viral transmission of these messages.  We asked the following research questions: Will recipients of the messages understand the action requested in the message?  Identify them as user-generated content?  Express intention to contact KNOWIT and get tested?  Pass the message along to friends?

Methods:  Two samples were used for the first generation in the study; the community sample consists of 101 of 18-26 year olds intercepted in malls and movie theatres in low-income neighborhoods in Atlanta; the other consists of 612 college students at two universities, one in the southeast and one in the northeast. The community sample was  shown the messages on cell phones, asked questions about them and then asked to send them along to three friends via cell phones.  The viral transmission was followed for two more generations with phone surveys. The college student sample was shown the messages via email, asked questions on a web-based survey, and asked to forward these messages via email to at least three friends.  Again the viral transmission was followed for two more generations with email surveys.

Results:  The community sample generally rated the messages positively but did discriminate among them with a preference for the most novel, either a cartoon that becomes real or a series of rapid cuts of different faces saying I’m not positive.  Everyone in the first generation of the community sample passed on the message.  Of the ten percent who could be reached in the second generation, 73% did pass the message on again showing the viability of viral transmission for these messages. 

Conclusions:  Although the primary objective of the message was to encourage use of KNOWIT, a database one can text to find an HIV testing location, implicit in this objective was encouraging testing generally.  Almost half (48 % of the first generation and 47% of the second generation) of the community sample reported that they intended to get tested in the next six months.  The majority of the community sample identified that these messages were user generated.  In general, the college students who were exposed to these messages via email rated them less positively and were much less likely to pass them on.  They also were much less likely to state their intention to access KNOWIT for a testing location.    

Implications for research and/or practice:  It is critical to have evidence to support the use of new technologies such as video cell phone messages.  Viral transmission did occur in the targeted audience suggesting that video cell phone messages could be a new low cost channel to expand communication among social networks.  This study also identifies evaluation methods which will be necessary to study these new media.