AN EXAMINATION OF HEALTH TOPICS THAT INFLUENCE HOW THE DIABETES AND HEART DISEASE COMMUNITIES INTERACT ON FACEBOOK

Purpose:  Given the upward trend of Internet use among individuals searching for health information and social support, this research sought to identify health topics presented for discussion to members of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and American Heart Association (AHA) Facebook pages, and to discern communication patterns between and among page members. 

Method:  Two randomly constructed weeks from each Facebook page were quantitatively content analyzed in the spring of 2013. The analysis examined both the text and attributes for each status update produced by the organizations, as well as associated comments. 31 status updates and 563 comments from the ADA, and 38 status updates and 678 comments from the AHA were analyzed. 

Result:  All statistical tests used an alpha level of .05. The AHA's updates were mainly lifestyle (42.1%) followed by support (26.3%), prevention (18.4%), awareness (7.9%), other (2.6%) and pregnancy health (0%). Surprisingly, the the majority of the ADA's updates were in the other category (38.7%) followed by lifestyle (19.4%), support (16.1%), prevention (6.5%), awareness (6.5%) and pregnancy health (6.5%). Significant differences in health topics were found between the organizations (χ² (7, 69) = 21.00, p<.05). ADA lifestyle updates had the most comments (n=130) while support updates had the most likes (n=4244) and shares (n=686). AHA support updates had the most comments (n=95), the other category had the most likes (n=1625) and prevention had the most shares (n=402). The mean differences between organizations indicated that the tone and level of agreement of comments from AHA page members were both more positive (M = 2.47, SD = 0.59), t(975.20) = 3.32, p < .001, and that members tended to agree more with status updates and/or other page members’ comments (M = 2.64, SD = 0.56), t(997.48) = 4.83, p < .001, than ADA comments that were both more neutral in tone (M = 2.33, SD = 0.82) and level of agreement (M = 2.45, SD = 0.75).

Conclusion:  These findings indicate that the ADA and the AHA provide their Facebook members with non-specific information that generally promotes a healthy lifestyle and offers social support. Corroborating prior research on social support and health behavior, members on both pages responded relatively favorably to the organizations' health promotion strategies and to each other, fostering a supportive community that may influence health decisions offline.