Audience-Centered Approach for Health Communication over Social Media during Pandemic: Persona Template Based on Delphi Technique

Abstract

Delivering a relevant health message can be achieved by understanding the audience. Persona is one of the approaches used to understand and represent the audience. It is observed that there is no general Persona template used for all contexts in the health field, but it should be adjusted to each context. The aim of this study is to reach a consensus among public health experts on a Persona template to understand the public on social media during pandemics. Three phases are applied in this study. In phase 1, we determined an initial set of items that public health experts should understand about the audience to design a relevant message from the literature. In phase 2, a modified Delphi was conducted to reach a consensus on the inclusion of these items in the Persona template by considering the communication over social media during a pandemic. Phase 3 presents the final version of the Persona template. Nine experts completed round 1, and 4 completed the round 2. Experts reached a consensus to include six items in the Persona template: sociodemographic data, preferences for receiving messages, preferred channels, risk perceptions and attitudes, current behavioral responses, and misinformation. The proposed template in this study was agreed upon by nine public health experts as a method to understand the social media audience during pandemics. The proposed template is ready to be filled out and used by health communicators and researchers to design a relevant message for the audience.