Social Media in Communicating Health Information: An Analysis of Facebook Groups Related to Hypertension

Details

• Journal Article:
  Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD)
• Personal Author:
  Al Mamun, Mohammad ; Ibrahim, Hamza M. ; Turin, Tanvir Chowdhury
• Description:
  Introduction
  
  We studied Facebook groups related to hypertension to characterize their objectives, subject matter, member sizes, geographical boundaries, level of activity, and user-generated content.
  
  Methods
  
  We performed a systematic search among open Facebook groups using the keywords “hypertension,” “high blood pressure,” “raised blood pressure,” and “blood pressure.” We extracted relevant data from each group’s content and developed a coding and categorizing scheme for the whole data set. Stepwise logistic regression was used to explore factors independently associated with each group’s level of activity.
  
  Results
  
  We found 187 hypertension-related Facebook groups containing 8,966 members. The main objective of most (59.9%) Facebook groups was to create hypertension awareness, and 11.2% were created primarily to support patients and caregivers. Among the top-displayed, most recent posts (n = 164), 21.3% were focused on product or service promotion, whereas one-fifth of posts were related to hypertension-awareness information. Each Facebook group’s level of activity was independently associated with group size (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.01–1.03), presence of “likes” on the most recent wall post (AOR, 3.55, 95% CI, 1.41–8.92), and presence of attached files on the group wall (AOR, 5.01, 95% CI, 1.25–20.1).
  
  Conclusion
  
  The primary objective of most of the hypertension-related Facebook groups observed in this study was awareness creation. Compared with the whole Facebook community, the total number of hypertension-related Facebook groups and their users was small and the groups were less active.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Adult Female Health Promotion Humans Hypertension/diagnosis Information Dissemination Male Middle Aged Patient Education As Topic Retrospective Studies Social Media Social Networking Social Support

  More +
• Source:
  Prev Chronic Dis. 12.
• DOI:
  http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd12.140265
• ISSN:
  1545-1151
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Volume:
  12
• Collection(s):
  Preventing Chronic Disease
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:bb3463d6d7921247c86495256338b172f0074f1bcf7c233b1eb4aea66477da499207a1a1a53b4008fb03222b347d39cc8bbcd72b69573b779a9443efdd435349
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/27600/cdc_27600_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 344.89 KB ]