Please Like Me: Facebook and Public Health Communication

James Kite · Bridget C. Foley · Anne Carolyn Grunseit · Becky Freeman

212 citations0/0 files storedPLoS ONE

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Social Media in Health Education Digital Marketing and Social Media Public Relations and Crisis Communication

Abstract

Facebook, the most widely used social media platform, has been adopted by public health organisations for health promotion and behaviour change campaigns and activities. However, limited information is available on the most effective and efficient use of Facebook for this purpose. This study sought to identify the features of Facebook posts that are associated with higher user engagement on Australian public health organisations' Facebook pages. We selected 20 eligible pages through a systematic search and coded 360-days of posts for each page. Posts were coded by: post type (e.g., photo, text only etc.), communication technique employed (e.g. testimonial, informative etc.) and use of marketing elements (e.g., branding, use of mascots). A series of negative binomial regressions were used to assess associations between post characteristics and user engagement as measured by the number of likes, shares and comments. Our results showed that video posts attracted the greatest amount of user engagement, although an analysis of a subset of the data suggested this may be a reflection of the Facebook algorithm, which governs what is and is not shown in user newsfeeds and appear to preference videos over other post types. Posts that featured a positive emotional appeal or provided factual information attracted higher levels of user engagement, while conventional marketing elements, such as sponsorships and the use of persons of authority, generally discouraged user engagement, with the exception of posts that included a celebrity or sportsperson. Our results give insight into post content that maximises user engagement and begins to fill the knowledge gap on effective use of Facebook by public health organisations.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 212 citations exist upstream.

References

2013A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health Communication 2010Use of mass media campaigns to change health behaviour 1999Celebrity Endorsement: A Literature Review 2013Social Media Brand Community and Consumer Behavior: Quantifying the Relative Impact of User- and Marketer-Generated Content 2009Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook 2014Are Health Behavior Change Interventions That Use Online Social Networks Effective? A Systematic Review 2007A systematic review of social marketing effectiveness 2012Adoption and use of social media among public health departments

Cited by

2018The spread of medical fake news in social media – The pilot quantitative study 2022“The potential of social media in health promotion beyond creating awareness: an integrative review”2020Social Media and Teens: A Needs Assessment Exploring the Potential Role of Social Media in Promoting Health 2018How Readability Shapes Social Media Engagement 2023

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.