How Health Communication Works with Social Media to Disseminate Information - Essay Example

The internet has turned out to be a dominant international communication mode for health interventions, offering public access to a broad category of health promotion programs, as well as opportunities for people to interact and coordinate with health professionals. The Internet has opened an opportunity for the mushrooming of social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Buzz. These terms are widely used on a daily basis by multitudes of people across the planet. The tremendous growth in social media has been astonishing to witness, but interesting as well, considering the numerous applications these tools have let loose, and their potential to have an influence on population health (Kwatra, Gupta & Anand).

Harnessing the Social Media for Health CommunicationIn a world that heavily depends on efficient and effective communication, the media has a significant role to play in creating awareness to individuals, including their access to health messages. Conventionally, public health institutions have utilized electronic and print media, as well as social marketing campaigns to distribute important health information to the public sphere. In the last decade, broadcast media has been the leading model of communication, and public health communication has progressed to reflect that trend (O’sullivan & Levac, 2010).

Following the development of the World Wide Web, public health communication techniques have evolved to fit the growing social media revolution. There exists rich literature that explains the effectiveness of utilizing traditional media for public health interventions and communication. Generally, reviews have revealed that mass media campaigns in public health are efficacious. However, few researchers hold the view that mass media campaigns, contrary to printed pamphlets, cannot bring about substantial behavior change in the target subjects.

The same researchers assert that campaigns are able to raise the level of public awareness and the cancellation of public health messages (O’sullivan & Levac, 2010). In addition, they suppose that campaigns conducted via websites, e-mail, and other internet applications can bring about positive behavior change in motivated participants (O’sullivan & Levac, 2010).