Advantages and Disadvantages of using Social Media for Public Health Communication
Social media has transformed from a passing trend to an integral communication channel for both profit and non-profit entities. Social networking sites are estimated to have 2 billion users, and are referred to as the eighth continent because of this large population (Lim, 2016). One benefit of using these sites for communication is that information can be dispensed across geographical boundaries with relative ease. Furtherance, social media platforms provide a forum for organizations to engage the public on their services, products or other pertinent issues; among such organizations are public health institutions. These organizations often use this platform to disseminate public information, rather than for engaging the masses in constructive interaction.
One advantage of disseminating healthcare information via social networking sites is that it encourages peer-to-peer interaction; an estimated 25% of chronic illnesses' patients engage with each other over the internet (McKee, 2013). Social media sites also prove advantageous as they increase public access to information; previously, local physicians controlled/owned most of the medical information within a community. Social networking sites can be used to collect data on public health, which is beneficial when monitoring disease outbreaks; however, this should not be assumed as replacement for traditional data collection avenues.
The use of social media by public health organizations poses a challenge to medical practitioners, as it creates the perception that a patient has all the information required on a condition, and hence he or she can self-diagnose and then self-medicate. This behavior creates tolerance to some drugs and in most scenarios a patient's condition is not fully treated, and thus will reoccur (Lim, 2016). Social media channels are not immune to false information, and thus communications by public health organizations may be misinterpreted and shared by some users creating a web of misinformation.
Description of the WHO and the Information it shares on Social Media
The World Health Organization (WHO) is an agency of the United Nations that focuses on global public health; its current priorities include sexual and reproductive health, eradication of communicable diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, and substance abuse. The organization has various social media pages, but this report will focus on its Twitter account. By beginning of 2017, WHO had 3.1 million followers on its page and it had posted 23,000 tweets. A majority of the information this organization shares on this page is mainly factsheets on various health conditions and issues.
As previously stated, the WHO, similar to other public health organizations, overemphasizes on information dissemination, rather than engaging its online audiences. The organization's posts include intricate statistics that may not be relevant to its Twitter audience, and that need to be processed by other institutions to make them understandable to the public. Nonetheless, WHO's Twitter page is a reliable source of facts on various conditions and can be used as a reference point when discussing such issues. Twitter's limit of 147 characters for each post may be the impeding reason why the organization's updates are usually hyperlinks to other pages on the internet.
Extent of the WHO’s Engagement with its Twitter Followers
The WHO has limited interaction and engagement with followers on its Twitter page. A considerable percentage of its posts are aimed at dispensing information, which is relevant to the organization's objectives. Any engagement with the public is reactive and rarely initiated by the agency. Arguably, engaging each of the 3 million followers one-on-one would be human-resource-intensive, and because the WHO's focus is on a macro-level then it can claim to comply with its goals by not engaging the public. The organization periodically posts expert responses to some of the questions raised by users on its page; this strategy furthers this page's reputation as a reliable source of healthcare information. Additionally, the organization posts links to surveys that followers can fill in; this assists in collection of data from a global audience with limited cost implications. Nonetheless, offline data collection remains the organization's preferred method.
Probably the relatively low number of users, 1190, followed by the WHO page is indicative of its non-engagement of the audience. Twitter requires users to be following each other for them to exchange private messages, and hence pages that engage their audience via this channel follow a relatively large number of individuals. The WHO page's retweets indicate that the organizational majorly engages institutional users, such as other UN agencies, and not individual members of the public.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The WHO's Twitter page currently can be described as a monologue because it is largely one-sided and there lacks input from the audience. This organization needs to appreciate the dynamic nature of social media in comparison to traditional platforms such as television and radio; the latter did not facilitate user engagement and only focused on disseminating information (Courtney, 2013). This UN agency focuses on providing information and facts about various healthcare issues, and thus its current approach to social media posting may be argued to be within its objectives; nevertheless, this channel is not effective if users are not actively allowed to participate.
The presumption that information needed by the public offline is the same it will require on online platforms has caused the WHO to ignore the intricacies of social network audiences. The page should initiate frequent and scheduled discussions with its followers to allow for more engagement. The organization can derive topics for such forums from trending issues, as these are what most users want to talk about online. A considerable percentage of the page's posts contain hyperlinks to content on other websites; this method of posting is ineffective as a majority of users do not click on these links because they presume they are advertisements, connect to phishing sites, or these individuals lack the resources to load these pages.
Currently, the WHO only engages other institutional users on its Twitter page; this should change if the organization wants to receive insightful feedback from its online audience. Additionally, the page has posts on several topics shared within the same period; it would be better if the WHO focuses on a limited number of issues per day to ensure each matter were covered widely.
The WHO should develop a social media strategy, and this should be preceded by an analysis of what information or level of interaction its 3 million followers want. The current strategy seems to focus on giving the users what the organization assumes they want, which has impeded on audience engagement. The formulation of a user-centric strategy would help increase the number of retweets and likes the page gets on its posts. The page also needs to post more visual content, as textual information is monotonous and with time can be boring. Furtherance, the WHO needs to share content on other general subjects that are of concern to its followers, for example, hurricane warnings.
References
Courtney, K. L. (2013). The use of social media in healthcare: organizational, clinical, and patient perspectives. Enabling Health and Healthcare Through ICT: Available, Tailored and Closer, 183, 244.
Lim, W.M. (2016). Social media in medical and health care: opportunities and challenges. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(7), 964 – 976
McKee, R. (2013). Ethical issues in using social media for health and health care research. Health Policy, 110(2), 298-301.
