Abstract
Background: The Department of Health (DoH) at the City of Johannesburg metropolitan municipality in South Africa develops various health awareness campaigns aimed at creating awareness of general health risks within the Johannesburg area. According to staff members of the DoH, the resources utilised in the current campaigns fail to reach a sufficiently broad audience and the campaigns struggle to deliver the intended messages. Furthermore, the development and implementation of campaigns are time consuming and costly.Objectives: This research focused on how online social networking (OSN) can support health awareness campaigns for the DoH in the Johannesburg region. OSN may be regarded as a tool that will assist the DoH to reach a wider audience, send health-related messages and provide a two-way communication channel.Method: The research used an exploratory research design with a purposive non-probability sample. A survey was used as the data collection instrument. Statistical analysis was performed on the data obtained from the surveys.Results: The results indicate that the DoH can benefit from the use of OSN in health promotion campaigns. The benefits include, but are not limited to, an increase in engagement with the target market, ease of use and reach within the specified audience.Conclusion: Although there are numerous advantages associated with the integration of OSN by the DoH, the DoH needs to develop training and development programmes for OSN to encourage its use by DoH staff members. The main aim of the programmes is to create internal OSN capabilities to support the OSN strategy.
Highlights
According to Smith (2011), online social networking (OSN) is ‘one of the greatest innovations in the Internet today
This study investigated the potential usage of OSN by the Department of Health (DoH) as part of health promotion campaigns
There are a variety of OSN sites available that can assist the DoH to share information about its health promotion campaigns
Summary
According to Smith (2011), online social networking (OSN) is ‘one of the greatest innovations in the Internet today. A number of not-for-profit organisations and government agencies worldwide have started to implement OSN to share information and knowledge and communicate with their target market utilising the digital channels created by OSN. The CDC has developed a toolkit to promote the use of online social networking. This toolkit provides guidance regarding OSN and lessons on how participation in and incorporation of OSN into government agencies to promote health promotion campaigns, can be achieved (Brodalski et al 2011). The development and implementation of campaigns are time consuming and costly
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