Analyzing Health Organizations' Use of Social Networking for Promoting Health Literacy

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, have increased in popularity at a very rapid pace. Of the popular social networking sites, Twitter has become the fastest-growing member community site. The number of unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent over the course of a year, from 457,000 visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009 (McGiboney, 2009). Responding to a growing interest in the adoption of social media in health communication, this study explored how health-related organizations use Twitter to promote health literacy in society and to raise awareness of their brands and manage their images. To better understand its potential impacts on health communication, it is necessary to identify the current use of Twitter in health care and health communication arenas. Thus, the research questions we explored were: RQ1: What health-related organizations utilize Twitter to communicate health messages; what type of tweet do they post and what twitter applications do they use? RQ2: What health literacy topics do health-related organizations address in their posts on Twitter? RQ3: How do health-related organizations use Twitter for impression management and advertising?

Methods: The sampling frame of this study was composed of tweets derived from a search of the combined term “health literacy” during the following time periods: October 25-31, 2009, November 7-14, 2009, December 15-23, 2009, and January 4-10, 2010. As a result, a total of 1,044 tweets were found to be available for analysis. Coding categories were based on Web reports on key Twitter features (Schonfeld, 2009) and previous literature in health communication and media studies. Corresponding to the research questions, the coding scheme was composed of three parts: (1) basic categorizing information about the tweet and the Twitter user, (2) health literacy topics mentioned in the tweet, and (3) health-related organizations’ efforts for impression management and advertising.

Results: Results for health-related organizations’ use of Twitter in promoting health literacy were analyzed using frequencies and chi-square analyses. Of 1,044 tweets, 571 tweets (54.7%) appeared to be posted either by organizations or individuals on behalf of an organization.

Conclusions: Content analysis of tweets from health-related organizations revealed that the organizations’ tweets were often quoted or republished by other Twitter users. Nonprofit organizations or community groups appeared to more actively engage in posting health information and interacting with the public on Twitter than did other types of health-related organizations, such as health business corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies. This result suggests that Twitter may be more appealing to nonprofit organizations because it creates a barrier-free environment that allows them to share important information through real-time exchanges without significant efforts.

Implications for research and/or practice: Unlike business organizations such as pharmaceutical companies, nonprofit health organizations or advocacy groups may suffer from lack of money, staff, and other resources in developing and implementing communication strategies for health intervention and promotion programs. Thus, it is likely that nonprofit organizations and support groups recognized the rapid growth of Twitter and its value as the least expensive but most highly effective communication tool.