Abstract

This Major Research Paper will examine health professionals’ interpretation of social media and their motivation for using it in health promotion. Four health professionals’ were interviewed in order to better understand their unique perspective on the use of social media within health promotion. The analysis was grounded in the theories of technological affordances and social learning theory. It was found that while health professionals’ had a variety of reasons for using social media in their professional practice, the prospect of engaging with the public regarding health topics was a main motivation for using social media. As the use of social media within the field of health promotion is an important topic and will likely continue to be in the future, it is critical to gain a more complete understanding of how health professionals’ interpret social media and what motivates them to use social media to promote health.

Highlights

  • Health advice is increasingly being offered online as health professionals’ recognize the potential of online platforms to share information quickly with diverse audiences (Korda & Itani, 2013)

  • The theory of technological affordances was beneficial in this category as it was important to determine if health professionals’ could articulate the benefits and limitations they noticed with different social media platforms and how these affordances effected their communication with the public

  • This study examines social media use in health promotion from the perspective of health professionals’

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Summary

Introduction

Health advice is increasingly being offered online as health professionals’ recognize the potential of online platforms to share information quickly with diverse audiences (Korda & Itani, 2013). This increase in health information being disseminated online has led many health professionals’ to incorporate social media into their overall health promotion strategy. Social media potentially offers a range of benefits to both health professionals’ and the general public, there are possibly some ethical and legal concerns with the use of social media. The potential to engage is one of the most promising benefits of using social media for health promotion activities (Eysenbach, 2008), and can possibly explain the increased use of social media among health professionals’. The technological affordances (benefits and constraints of a given technological platform) granted to health professionals by social media potentially explain the increased interest in using social media to promote health

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