Social Networking Media: A Newer Approach to Increase Awareness Against Tobacco Chewing
Keywords:
social networking, Facebook, youth, tobacco addiction, health campaignAbstract
Background: Facebook is the most famous social networking website with more than 1.6 billion active users. This study which involves active participation and evaluation of responses to see it’s usefulness in planning advertisement for future media campaigns and intervention using social networking sites.
Method: This was an interventional study, where intervention was done by providing health related message about tobacco chewing. The study was designed in two phases: 1) involvement phase 2) study phase
Result: Total 840 users “Liked” the page, and participated in the study. There were females (29.2%) and males (57.1%) from the age group of 15-25 years. The proportion of the participants who liked the page were from Gujarat 31% followed by Delhi 20% and Maharashtra 17%. The percentage of reach for images was 76.3% followed by 69.4% for status update , 54.5% for video, 47.1% for slogan and message and for web links 30.6%. Total 71% of the users had clicked for images, 35% of the users had clicked for video, 22% users had clicked for status update, 16% of the users had any clicked for slogan and messages and 12 % of the users had clicked for web links.
Conclusion: Facebook has been found highly effective in transmitting messages to health consumers, especially among the youngsters. So information regarding tobacco addiction and outcomes of tobacco chewing can be communicated effectively through Facebook through intense messages.
References
Facebook users in India up by 5% , available at http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/facebook-users-in-india-up-by-5/article5019080.ece. Accessed on 15/8/2013
Internet Telecommunications Union. Percentage of individuals using the Internet 2000-2012 Geneva; 2013. Available at: www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/2013/Individuals_Internet_2000-2012.xls Accessed on Jun 13 2013.
Boyd Danah D, Ellison NB. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, Scholarship. J. Comput. Commun. 2007;13(1):1–19.
Facebook Reports. First Quarter 2013 results. Accessed on Jun 13 2013. Available at: http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=761090.
Chawada B, Choksi R, Choksi S, Dari U, Pawar A, Bansal R. Ad-diction to social networking websites and its effect on life course of college going student in Surat city. Natl. J. Community Med. 2010;1(2):174–5.
Gupta A, Tyagi M, Sharma D. Use of Social Media Marketing in Healthcare. J. Health Manag. 2013 Jul 24;15(2):293–302.
Lowe JB, Barnes M, Teo C, Sutherns S. Investigating the use of social media to help women from going back to smoking and to-bacco chewing post-partum. Aust. N. Z. J. Public Health. 2012;36(1):30–2.
Abrahamson E. and Mizrahi R., Social Network Effects on the Extent of Innovation Diffusion, A Computer Simulation. Organi-zation Science, 1997, 8(3), 289-309.
Jaffar AA. Exploring the use of a facebook page in anatomy educa-tion. Anat. Sci. Educ. 2013 Sep 10;
Freeman B, Chapman S. Measuring Interactivity on Tobacco Con-trol Websites. J. Health Commun. Taylor & Francis; 2012;17(7):857–65.
Pechmann C. Changing adolescent smoking prevalence: impact of advertising interventions. In: Changing Adolescent Smoking Prev-alence. Tobacco Control Monograph No. 14. Bethesda (MD): U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Insti¬tute, 2001. NIH Publication No. 02-5086.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Reducing Tobac-co Use. A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta (GA): U.S. De-partment of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Preven-tion and Health Pro¬motion, Office on Smoking and Health, 2000.
Ramo DE, Prochaska JJ. Broad reach and targeted recruitment using Facebook for an online survey of young adult substance use. J. Med. Internet Res. 2012 Jan;14(1):e28.
MacKenzie R, Chapman S. Generating news media interest in tobacco control; challenges in an advanced policy environment. Health Promot. J. Austr. 2012 Aug;23(2):92–6.
Avery E, Lariscy R, Amador E, Ickowitz T, Primm C, Taylor A. Diffusion of social media among public relations practitioners in health departments across various community population sizes. Journal of Public Relations Research. 2010;22(3):336-58.
Schein R, Wilson K, Keelan J. Literature review on the effectiveness of the use of social media: A report for peel public health. . 2010 Ju-ly 2010.
Edward S, Nichols J. Engaging a new community: Going grass-roots with facebook. Transfusion.Conference: AABB Annual Meet-ing and CTTXPO Baltimore, MD United States Conference 2010 Oct 9-12 .Conference Publication: 2010 September 2010;50:106A.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The authors retain the copyright of their article, with first publication rights granted to Medsci Publications.
