#BeTheMatch: Assessing How Testimonials on Reddit Promote the Importance of Donating Bone Marrow

Abstract

This study explores how sharing testimonials on the social media network Reddit may encourage individuals to donate bone marrow. The theory of planned behavior guided a quantitative content analysis of 1,015 Reddit comments about donation. Research questions asked how individuals post about donation and how Redditors engage with this content. Overall, comments addressed more positive than negative outcome, efficacy, and normative beliefs. Comments that discussed beliefs related to registering to donate and the process of donating received significantly higher engagement than other comments. Additionally, comments that included positive outcome beliefs related to registering, positive efficacy beliefs related to registering and donating, and positive normative beliefs related to donating received higher engagement than other comments. Results suggest testimonials may be most effective if they focus on behavior facilitators and if they present donation as a positive norm deviant behavior. Finally, the Reddit forums functioned as places for individuals to seek out and share information. Comments included calls to action and hyperlinks for health resources. This research reveals how organic conversations on Reddit may promote health information seeking and advocacy behavior adoption. Implications for the theory of planned behavior and the use of Reddit as a platform for health promotion are discussed.

Notes

¹ The number of comments on posts ranged from 7–1,170. ExtractR only retrieved the top 500 comments for each post due to API limitations.

² The researchers coded 1374 posts, of which 73.8% (1,015) related to bone marrow donation. The additional 26.2% related to other topics and coding categories did not apply (e.g., conversations about blood donation or side-tracked conversations). The initial sample of 1374 was used for intercoder reliability.