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Background: Social media platforms are increasingly being used to disseminate messages about prenatal health. However, to date, we lack a systematic assessment of how to evaluate the impact of official prenatal health messaging and campaigns using social media data., Objective: This study aims to review both the published and gray literature on how official prenatal health messaging and campaigns have been evaluated to date in terms of impact, acceptability, effectiveness, and unintended consequences, using social media data., Methods: A total of 6 electronic databases were searched and supplemented with the hand-searching of reference lists. Both published and gray literature were eligible for review. Data were analyzed using content analysis for descriptive data and a thematic synthesis approach to summarize qualitative evidence. A quality appraisal tool, designed especially for use with social media data, was used to assess the quality of the included articles., Results: A total of 11 studies were eligible for the review. The results showed that the most common prenatal health behavior targeted was alcohol consumption, and Facebook was the most commonly used source of social media data. The majority (n=6) of articles used social media data for descriptive purposes only. The results also showed that there was a lack of evaluation of the effectiveness, acceptability, and unintended consequences of the prenatal health message or campaign., Conclusions: Social media is a widely used and potentially valuable resource for communicating and evaluating prenatal health messaging. However, this review suggests that there is a need to develop and adopt sound methodology on how to evaluate prenatal health messaging using social media data, for the benefit of future research and to inform public health practice., (©Nessie Felicia Frennesson, Cheryl McQuire, Saher Aijaz Khan, Julie Barnett, Luisa Zuccolo. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 20.12.2023.)

Objective: To examine the use and impact of social media on 2-way communication between consumers and public organizations in the food safety and nutrition area., Methods: In-depth qualitative study conducted between October, 2012 and January, 2013, using semi-structured interviews in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Sixteen professionals worked on the public interface within 5 national organizations with a role in communicating on food safety and nutrition issues in this thematic analysis., Results: Five main themes were identified: gradual shift toward social media-based queries and complaints; challenges and limitations of social media to deal with queries and complaints; benefits of using social media in query and complaint services; content redesign driven by social media use; and using social media to learn more about consumers., Conclusion and Implications: Social media penetrated and brought new opportunities to food organizations' interactions with the public. Given the increasing use of social media by the public, food organizations need to explore such new opportunities for communication and research., (Copyright © 2015 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The world of communication has changed significantly in the last decade as a result of the evolution of social media. Food crisis managers and communicators should be cognizant of the messages presented to the public by all media channels during a crisis. Using the 2008 Irish dioxin contamination incident as an example, a quantitative content analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between social and traditional media. Messages published in printed newspapers (n = 141), blogs and forums (n = 107), and Twitter (n = 68) were analysed to investigate sourcing practice, story topic and use of tone. Results revealed that traditional media relied on diverse offline sources in reporting a wide range of topics. In comparison, social media responded faster and diminished faster, using offline and online media news messages as the primary sources in reporting very limited topics. No significant difference was found in the presence of negative tone across media., (© The Author(s) 2013.)

People living with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes (T1DM &T2DM) report that media – including journalism, health promotion, and popular culture – are a primary source of stigmatic representations of diabetes, and that this compromises their physical and mental health. This view of diabetes as stigmatised is not shared by many health professionals and nor the wider public. We used an existing representation of diabetes on Instagram, #DiabetesOnAPlate, to examine how stigmatic representations of diabetes are (re)produced, discussed, and contested. Our analysis found that, consistent with the notion of diabetes as stigmatised, use of the hashtag #DiabetesOnAPlate on Instagram is associated with public health discourses of indulgent eating and with posts that signal recognition of this as a moral transgression. A subsequent on-line survey found that participants who did not have diabetes did not recognise a prototypical #DiabetesOnAPlate post as stigmatic. Whilst some with T1DM and T2DM did perceive and contest the stigma, T1DM participants did so for their group (but not for T2DM); and there was evidence that some T2DM participants internalised the stigma. These findings support concerns about the everyday, divisive nature of stigmatic representations of diabetes on social network sites, which on the one hand reflect public health discourse and on the other may compromise health policy objectives and exacerbate health inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those suffering with food allergies and intolerances need to consider risk every day, and professional organisations are increasingly enrolled in this risk management venture (e.g. offering support, developing legislation, and enforcing laws). Following the release of new food allergen rules in the UK, theDaily Telegraph, a national broadsheet newspaper, published a letter and an article in March 2015 endorsed by 100 chefs criticising the legislation. The chefs felt that innovation and creativity were being harmed by the requirement to state the presence of 14 allergens in the dishes they cooked. Following the release, many food allergen-concerned consumers utilised social media to share their views. In this article we use qualitative research data, comments posted online and collected between 9 and 16 March 2015, to explore how claimants positioned themselves and others in the ensuing online debate, and how the debate itself was framed. The data included traditional news articles, online forum comments, individual Twitter posts, and Twitter discussions. We identified frames across the debate discourse that emphasised medical concerns around managing risks associated with food allergy/intolerance, the assignment of responsibility, fairness of access, the political nature of the debate, and the financial implications involved. We draw on Positioning Theory to illustrate how user-positions can be defined, redefined, and challenged in the light of new or varying information. Our findings have implications for understanding communication around managing food risks from both a consumer and business perspective, and understanding the progression of debates through both traditional and new media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges of emergency management lies in communicating risks to the public. On some occasions, risk communicators might seek to increase awareness over emerging risks, while on others the aim might be to avoid escalation of public reactions. Social media accounts offer an opportunity to rapidly distribute critical information and in doing so to mitigate the impact of emergencies by influencing public reactions. This article draws on theories of risk and emergency communication in order to consider the impact of Twitter as a tool for communicating risks to the public. We analyse 10,020 Twitter messages posted by the official accounts of UK local government authorities (councils) in the context of two major emergencies: the heavy snow of December 2010 and the riots of August 2011. Twitter was used in a variety of ways to communicate and manage associated risks including messages to provide official updates, encourage protective behaviour, increase awareness and guide public attention to mitigating actions. We discuss the importance of social media as means of increasing confidence in emergency management institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the use of social media in union communications based on an international survey with 149 unions affiliated with UNI Global Union. High expectations of union modernization, leadership and pressures from members are likely to drive the agenda of social media within unions. However, the actual use of different channels is based on organizational variables such as membership base and participation in communities of practice. Beliefs about the anticipated benefits and risks of social media were not found to be influential in these early assessments. Implications for union communication strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing numbers of individuals describe themselves as feeling lonely, regardless of age, gender or geographic location. This article investigates how social media users self-disclose feelings of loneliness, and how they seek and provide support to each other. Motivated by related studies in this area, a dataset of 22,477 Twitter posts sent over a one-week period was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Through a thematic analysis, we demonstrate that self-disclosure of perceived loneliness takes a variety of forms, from simple statements of " I'm lonely ", through to detailed self-reflections of the underlying causes of loneliness. The analysis also reveals forms of online support provided to those who are feeling lonely. Further, we conducted a quantitative linguistic content analysis of the dataset which revealed patterns in the data, including that 'lonely' tweets were significantly more negative than those in a control sample, with levels of negativity fluctuating throughout the week and posts sent at night being more negative than those sent in the daytime. • Twitter is used to both seek and provide support regarding loneliness. • Language in these disclosures differ when related to the day and time of disclosure. • Weekend and night-time disclosures are associated with the angriest language. • A range of disclosures suggest that user behaviour may develop over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Food crises imply responses that are not what people and organisations would normally do, if one or more threats (health, economic, etc.) were not present. At an individual level, this motivates individuals to implement coping strategies aimed at adaptation to the threat that has been presented, as well as the reduction of stressful experiences. In this regard, microblogging channels such as Twitter emerge as a valuable resource to access individuals' expressions of coping. Accordingly, Twitter expressions are generally more natural, spontaneous and heterogeneous — in cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions — than expressions found on other types of social media (e.g. blogs). Moreover, as a social media channel, it provides access not only to an individual but also to a social level of analysis, i.e. a psychosocial media analysis. To show the potential in this regard, our study analysed Twitter messages produced by individuals during the 2011 EHEC/Escherichia coli bacteria outbreak in Europe, due to contaminated food products. This involved more than 3100 cases of bloody diarrhoea and 850 of haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), and 53 confirmed deaths across the EU. Based on data collected in Spain, the country initially thought to be the source of the outbreak, an initial quantitative analysis considered 11,411 tweets, of which 2099 were further analysed through a qualitative content analysis. This aimed at identifying (1) the ways of coping expressed during the crisis; and (2) how uncertainty about the contaminated product, expressed through hazard notifications, influenced the former. Results revealed coping expressions as being dynamic, flexible and social, with a predominance of accommodation, information seeking and opposition (e.g. anger) strategies. The latter were more likely during a period of uncertainty, with the opposite being true for strategies relying on the identification of the contaminated product (e.g. avoid consumption/purchase). Implications for food crisis communication and monitoring systems are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Social media interactions are popularly implicated in psychological changes like radicalization. However, there are currently no viable methods to assess whether social media interactions actually lead to such changes. The purpose of the current research was to develop a methodological paradigm that can assess such longitudinal change in individuals' social media posts. Using this method, we analyzed the longitudinal timelines of 110 Twitter users (40,053 tweets) who had expressed support for Daesh (also known as Islamic State, or ISIS) and we compared them to a baseline sample of twitter timelines (215,008 tweets by 109 users) to investigate the factors associated with within-person increases in conformity to the vernacular and linguistic style of tweets that supported violent extremism. We found that conformity to both extremist group vernacular and linguistic style increased over time, and with mobilizing online interactions. Thus, we show how to detect within-person changes over time in social media data and suggest why these changes occur, and in doing so, validate a methodological paradigm that can detect and predict within-person change in psychological group memberships through social media interactions. • New paradigm to detect within-person longitudinal changes in social media activity. • Evidence that mobilizing social media activity causes psychological change. • Linguistic analysis provides the feature vectors for Daesh-supporter classification. • Social media data transformed into meaningful psychological factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]