Social Media Health Promotion and Audience Engagement: The Roles of Information Dissemination, Organization-Audience Interaction, and Action Confidence Building

ABSTRACT

Social media have become an important platform for health promotion. Based on the Information-Community-Action Framework, we conducted a content analysis of 1,481 Facebook postings by Singapore’s Health Promotion Board. Results showed that organizational information and health benefit information dissemination were positively associated with online audience engagement. Also, organization-audience interaction had a positive relationship with online audience engagement. In addition, messages that help build confidence for health behavior change increased online audience engagement. In addition to these main effects, organization-audience interaction also played a moderating role that strengthened the effects of information dissemination and action confidence building on online audience engagement. This study offers important theoretical contributions to the Information-Community-Action Framework and has practical implications for enhancing the effectiveness of health promotion in this digital era.

Acknowledgments

All authors have agreed to the submission and the article is not currently being considered for publication by any other print or electronic journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.