Social Media's Role In Bridging the Health Information Gap

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  One of the eternal questions consumer-facing campaigns face is, “What is the best way to reach my audience?”  Often, demographic factors such as socio-economic status complicate the answer.  Today, social media, with its relatively low cost and potentially far reach is often assumed to be a panacea; yet, little research has been conducted regarding how it stacks up as a way to obtain health information, compared to other channels. Understanding the information channels that low-income respondents prefer for health information, specifically, can help programs maximize message saturation and efficiency, even among this hard-to-reach audience. 

Methods:  We examined data from Porter Novelli’s 2011 ConsumerStyles survey of over 8,000 adults.  We looked at those in poverty (approximation using the 2011 HHS poverty guidelines) compared to high-income respondents ($125K or more) to gain a better understanding of the channels these audiences select when they are looking for health information. 

Results:  Low-income respondents are more likely to be confused by health information and are less likely to seek it out

• Low-income respondents are more likely than high-income respondents to self-report high Health confusion (23% vs. 8%) and less likely to have low confusion (33% vs. 54%).  Accordingly, low-income respondents are less likely to be active health information seekers (55% vs. 66%) and are more likely to say they never look for information about health problems (17% vs. 6%).

 Low-income respondents use social media regularly

• More than a third of low-income respondents access social media sites at least once a day, and 54% do so at least once a week.  These data are comparable to high-income respondents. 

 Low-income respondents are MORE interactive in their social media use than their peers

• Low-income social media users are more likely than high-income social media users to post to their own pages (40% vs. 28%), post to friends’ pages (42% vs. 34%), read blogs (15% vs. 8%), comment on blogs (21% vs. 6%), write their own blogs (11% vs. 4%), become friends with brands (19% vs. 5%), read blogs or tweets from brands (10% vs. 3%), share content (17% vs. 7%), and play online games (34% vs. 13%).

 Social media use for health information shows promise

• Among those who do look for information about health problems, the top three sources across all income groups are professionals, family and friends, and Internet searches.  Although “asking friends via a social networking site” is far down the list, it is more popular among low-income respondents than high-income respondents (6% vs. 0%, respectively).  

Conclusions: This research illustrates how we can combine our knowledge of the demographic and health behavioral differences between low-income and high-income respondents with their preferred channels for health information to truly customize how we say what we want them to hear and have it heard.

Implications for research and/or practice: Future research should focus on how to capitalize on the highly-interactive social media behavior of low-income respondents to use this channel for health information sharing.