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Public Health Communication and Social Media
Public Health Communication and Social Media
Details:
Social media channels are designed to be engaging; however, these media are often used by public health organizations and practitioners as a means to disseminate mass information, rather than to engage audiences in meaningful interaction. Harnessing social media to best achieve public health outcomes is a topic of much discussion and study in the public health community.For this assignment, you will analyze public health communication via social media in your community. Follow a public health organization, local or national, on a social media channel (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) for at least 3 weeks. In a paper of 1,000-1,250 words, address the following:
- Describe the benefits/advantages and challenges/risks of using social media for public health communication.
- Describe the organization you followed and the social media channel you selected. What kind of information is shared on social media by the organization?
- To what degree does the organization engage with users/followers (e.g., responding to questions, engaging in conversation, hosting “chats” with experts, soliciting information)?
- What improvements or suggestions would you make to this organization regarding its social media engagement? Why?
Example.
Over the past ten to twenty years, a lot has changed in how the general public learns about news and gets information. Fewer people read newspapers and no longer watch television newscasts. Websites on the internet, and more specifically social media sites, have emerged as major sources of information flow in recent years. Social networking sites are used by 67 percent of internet users (Holdman et al., 2013) .Many of these social media channels now have a large number of followers, including older generations who, just a few short years ago, had trouble starting computers. An estimated ninety percent of older adults have utilized social media to locate health-related information (Newberry, 2019). Regarding millennials, many believe that something is false if it cannot be found online. There are many benefits to using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others to communicate with followers, but there are also many dangers.
