Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Objectives: This study carried out a systematic review on the literature that evaluated the various health promotion interventions based on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Statistical Analysis: In social media, user messages carry the traits of health related activities such as interactions, emotional support, vaccination campaigns and nutrition improvement. These types of traits in the social media can be leveraged to identify the audience and effective approaches for health related activities. The work analysed the user engagement in each platform, behaviour and response efficacies achieved, targeted audience for different interventions, effectiveness of each platform and technologies used in the studies. Findings: The evaluation studies conducted on health interventions using social media for vaccination, smoking cessation, heart disease and sexually transmitted infections are reviewed. There are eight items used including response efficacy and behaviour efficacy to report about the target audience on social media for health campaigns. The target audience are identified using age or ethnicity. Implementing a social marketing approach through social media to initiate interest and engagement for a web-based software package is both hands-on and reliable with the way young individuals practice the media to share ideas and promote them, thus the intervention was considered a central focus of a greater campaign. Objective measures such as behaviour change and response are measured using summative and outcome evaluations. The technologies used for data collection and analysis substantiate the relevant technique for individual media, variables considered for particular disease health intervention, statistical models, survey methods and randomized control trials. The evidences from the studies reveal that Facebook and YouTube can be effectively used to target audience at the age group of nineteen – twenty-nine for smoking cessation and sexually transmitted health care interventions. Based on the evidences, the suitable social networking sites were identified for the targeted audience to the specific disease health interventions. Applications/Improvements: To build healthcare educated online communities in the social media, auto message feature and auto feedback system can help to increase the audience interaction. Vaccination healthcare intervention studies suggest on the road to increasing the reliability of the contents and educating the audience with the positive impacts of vaccination.

Keywords: Behaviour Efficacy, Health Hazards, Health Interventions, Health Promotion, Targeted Audience, Vaccination