Social Media and Healthcare Credibility: Information Sensitivity on a Global Platform
Loading...
Date
Authors
Bowers, Mary Katherine
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The power of social media platforms is undeniable. Applications like Twitter, Instagram,
Snapchat, and Facebook have taken over modern society, integrating themselves into every facet of
human life. Some implications of those integrations have been obvious, like decreased in-person
socialization of teenagers. Other implications, especially regarding the interplay between social media
platforms and human health communications, have been slower to realize and more difficult to witness.
Social media platforms’ power stems from their ability to reach instantaneously millions, if not billions,
of users in a split second. This power can be used to start conversations, spark trends, share
information, spread news updates, or even market brands and products. Jin and Phua (2014) specifically
name Twitter for having “strong potential as an interactive advertising platform,” which can be
accredited to the site’s purpose: sharing the voices of its users. Twitter has ignited the spread of
electronic word-of-mouth, or eWOM, defined as “online information sharing (i.e. advice and
recommendation) in the form of non-commercial messages expressed between consumers about their
experiences in buying goods and services . . . altering human interaction among millions of people
worldwide” (Suki, Suki, Mokhtar, Ahmad, 2016).
The use of the Internet and power of social media has also encouraged adults to seek
information and answers to health-related questions online, rather than to visit a doctor’s office.
Surveying 1,066 adults, the 2010 Harris Poll found that 88% of the American adults connected to the
Internet looked for health-related information for themselves or others online (Leykin, 2012). Popular
Twitter accounts distributing health-related information include organizations like the World Health
Organization with 4.28 million followers, or television medical personalities, like Dr. Sanjay Gupta who
boasts 2.56 million followers (Twitter, 2018).
Bowers3
Since Twitter’s creation in 2006, there has been extensive research on users’ perceived
credibility of published Tweets, suggesting that authority, bandwagon, and source proximity cues have
direct ties to a users’ interpreted credibility of a tweet (Lee and Sundar, 2013). However, little attention
has been paid to what action follows after a user establishes a tweet to be credible or not, especially
when the Tweet contains high involvement health information. At the conclusion of their research, Lee
and Sundar recommend future research to track how health information tweets “are received and
shared, in order to generate specific predictions about the effects of particular attributes of tweets on
content credibility, as well as higher-order outcomes such as a sense of community via social media.”
Description
Keywords
Social Media, Healthcare, Credibility, Involvement, Likelihood to Share, Marketing, Business