Health Conditions on Facebook: A Descriptive Analysis of Page Content and User Engagement
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Abstract
Background: The Internet has become a primary source of health information, with 72% of adult Internet users reporting to have searched online for health information in the past year. Although the majority of online health information seekers report beginning their search on a search engine like Google, the emergence of Web 2.0 has fueled the growth of social networking sites (SNS) as a new way to not only find, but share information. Facebook (FB) is the most widely used SNS with a rapidly-expanding user demographic; however, little is known about how health conditions are represented publicly on this specific SNS.
Objective: We sought to describe how ‘popular’ health conditions searched for on the Internet are represented within FB; specifically, the content of condition-specific FB Pages, and user engagement within these pages.
Methods: On July 24, 2012, we identified the top 20 most-searched-for health conditions on Google using Google Insight. We then used the same keywords to find the top 50 FB Page search results for each condition. We recorded the number of ‘Likes’ for each page to reflect user engagement, and reviewed recent page content for condition-relevancy. We then categorized the type of content on the page into one of seven types (patient support, general support, information/awareness, marketing/promotion, Wikipedia-type pages, blank, or other).
Results: Of the 953 FB Pages sampled, 673 (70.6%) were relevant to the health condition searched. Breast cancer, diabetes, cancer, thyroid, and arthritis lead in the number of relevant pages; stroke, HIV, spine, HPV, and diarrhea were found to have the lowest number of relevant pages. Most pages were marketing and promotion (n=168 or 32.2%) followed by information/awareness (n=108, 20.7%), and Wikipedia-type pages (n=81, 15.5%). Even when grouped, support pages made up only a small percentage of pages (n=68, 13.0%). Nevertheless, support pages were found to have the largest ratio of ‘likes’ (41% of total ‘likes’) vs. number of pages out of all content types including marketing/promotion, which represented 32% of pages but comprised 47% of total ‘likes’.
Conclusions: The large percentage of irrelevant FB pages poses a limitation to the amount of easily accessible health information available on FB. As a result, this may negatively affect individuals with limited literacy skills and knowledge who go on FB to look for health information and to connect with others, whether they may be other disease-sufferers or caregivers. FB users appear to engage more with marketing/promotion and general support pages. Future research to understand why some health conditions are underrepresented on FB Pages and what drives user engagement around health conditions may aid in a better understanding of the patient-caregiver experience and inform the development of targeted and effective public health initiatives.
Objective: We sought to describe how ‘popular’ health conditions searched for on the Internet are represented within FB; specifically, the content of condition-specific FB Pages, and user engagement within these pages.
Methods: On July 24, 2012, we identified the top 20 most-searched-for health conditions on Google using Google Insight. We then used the same keywords to find the top 50 FB Page search results for each condition. We recorded the number of ‘Likes’ for each page to reflect user engagement, and reviewed recent page content for condition-relevancy. We then categorized the type of content on the page into one of seven types (patient support, general support, information/awareness, marketing/promotion, Wikipedia-type pages, blank, or other).
Results: Of the 953 FB Pages sampled, 673 (70.6%) were relevant to the health condition searched. Breast cancer, diabetes, cancer, thyroid, and arthritis lead in the number of relevant pages; stroke, HIV, spine, HPV, and diarrhea were found to have the lowest number of relevant pages. Most pages were marketing and promotion (n=168 or 32.2%) followed by information/awareness (n=108, 20.7%), and Wikipedia-type pages (n=81, 15.5%). Even when grouped, support pages made up only a small percentage of pages (n=68, 13.0%). Nevertheless, support pages were found to have the largest ratio of ‘likes’ (41% of total ‘likes’) vs. number of pages out of all content types including marketing/promotion, which represented 32% of pages but comprised 47% of total ‘likes’.
Conclusions: The large percentage of irrelevant FB pages poses a limitation to the amount of easily accessible health information available on FB. As a result, this may negatively affect individuals with limited literacy skills and knowledge who go on FB to look for health information and to connect with others, whether they may be other disease-sufferers or caregivers. FB users appear to engage more with marketing/promotion and general support pages. Future research to understand why some health conditions are underrepresented on FB Pages and what drives user engagement around health conditions may aid in a better understanding of the patient-caregiver experience and inform the development of targeted and effective public health initiatives.
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