Complementary Media Use for Health Information Seeking and the Role of Health Orientation: A Survey Study in India

Abstract

Mass media are offering numerous ways to obtain health information. As people are facing with a plethora of media sources, it is important to investigate how they navigate and select multiple media sources in the process of searching for health information. With the basis of the channel complementarity theory, the current study aims to explore the patterns of media complementarity for health information seeking in the context of India. Our survey study among 1,005 participants in India showed that media complementarity did not occur within print media (e.g., newspaper, book, magazine) or within broadcast media (e.g., television and radio), but existed between these two categories of media. Also, the Internet had some complementary relationships with both print media and broadcast media. Besides, users’ health orientation served as a moderating factor that strengthened the media complementarity. The theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.

Disclosure Statement

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

Ethical Approval

Survey respondents provided informed consent. The study protocol was approved by the Department Ethics Review Committee at the National University of Singapore.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.