scholarly journals Attracting Users to Online Health Communities: Analysis of LungCancer.net’s Facebook Advertisement Campaign Data (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey N Horrell ◽  
Allison J Lazard ◽  
Amrita Bhowmick ◽  
Sara Hayes ◽  
Susan Mees ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Information ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Online Community ◽  
New Members ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Email Address ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Health Communities ◽  
Community Growth ◽  
Facebook Advertising

BACKGROUND With growing numbers of adults turning to the internet to get answers for health-related questions, online communities provide platforms with participatory networks to deliver health information and social support. However, to optimize the benefits of these online communities, these platforms must market effectively to attract new members and promote community growth. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the engagement results of Facebook advertisements designed to increase membership in the LungCancer.net online community. METHODS In the fall of 2017, a series of 5 weeklong Facebook advertisement campaigns were launched targeting adults over the age of 18 years with an interest in lung cancer to increase opt ins to the LungCancer.net community (ie, the number of people who provided their email to join the site). RESULTS The advertisements released during this campaign had a sum reach of 91,835 people, and 863 new members opted into the LungCancer.net community by providing their email address. Females aged 55 to 64 years were the largest population reached by the campaign (31,401/91,835; 34.29%), whereas females aged 65 and older were the largest population who opted into the LungCancer.net community (307/863; 35.57%). A total of US $1742 was invested in the Facebook campaigns, and 863 people opted into LungCancer.net, resulting in a cost of US $2.02 per new member. CONCLUSIONS This research demonstrates the feasibility of using Facebook advertising to promote and grow online health communities. More research is needed to compare the effectiveness of various advertising approaches. Public health professionals should consider Facebook campaigns to effectively connect intended audiences to health information and support.

scholarly journals Attracting Users to Online Health Communities: Analysis of LungCancer.net’s Facebook Advertisement Campaign Data

10.2196/14421 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. e14421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey N Horrell ◽  
Allison J Lazard ◽  
Amrita Bhowmick ◽  
Sara Hayes ◽  
Susan Mees ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Information ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Online Community ◽  
New Members ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Email Address ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Health Communities ◽  
Community Growth ◽  
Facebook Advertising

Background With growing numbers of adults turning to the internet to get answers for health-related questions, online communities provide platforms with participatory networks to deliver health information and social support. However, to optimize the benefits of these online communities, these platforms must market effectively to attract new members and promote community growth. Objective The aim of this study was to assess the engagement results of Facebook advertisements designed to increase membership in the LungCancer.net online community. Methods In the fall of 2017, a series of 5 weeklong Facebook advertisement campaigns were launched targeting adults over the age of 18 years with an interest in lung cancer to increase opt ins to the LungCancer.net community (ie, the number of people who provided their email to join the site). Results The advertisements released during this campaign had a sum reach of 91,835 people, and 863 new members opted into the LungCancer.net community by providing their email address. Females aged 55 to 64 years were the largest population reached by the campaign (31,401/91,835; 34.29%), whereas females aged 65 and older were the largest population who opted into the LungCancer.net community (307/863; 35.57%). A total of US $1742 was invested in the Facebook campaigns, and 863 people opted into LungCancer.net, resulting in a cost of US $2.02 per new member. Conclusions This research demonstrates the feasibility of using Facebook advertising to promote and grow online health communities. More research is needed to compare the effectiveness of various advertising approaches. Public health professionals should consider Facebook campaigns to effectively connect intended audiences to health information and support.

scholarly journals Suicidal behaviours and moderator support in online health communities: protocol for a scoping review

BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e034162
Author(s):  
Amanda Perry ◽  
Andrea Lamont-Mills ◽  
Carol du Plessis ◽  
Jan du Preez ◽  
Denise Pyle
Keyword(s):  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Data Extraction ◽  
Ethical Review ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Scoping Reviews ◽  
Health Communities

IntroductionSuicidal ideation and suicidal behaviours are common yet complex mental health presentations that can pose significant challenges for health professionals. The inability to accurately predict the individuals who may move from experiencing suicidal ideation and associated behaviours, to completing suicide, presents one such challenge. This can make it difficult to provide interventions and support to those most in need. Online health communities are one possible source of support for individuals who experience suicidal ideation and behaviours. These communities are becoming an increasingly popular way of accessing support, often with life-saving consequences. Within online communities, support is offered by various individuals including, in some instances, health professionals from various backgrounds, who work as online health community moderators. Given the growth of online communities and the increasing number of health professionals working as moderators, this scoping review seeks to map the literature that has focused on health professionals working as online community moderators, who interact with members experiencing suicidal ideation and behaviours. Mapping the existing literature offers benefits to both research and practice by identifying gaps in the research and providing a beginning knowledge base of current practice that can inform the training and development of health professionals working as community moderators.Methods and analysisThis scoping review will follow the methodological framework of Arksey and O’Malley, later adapted by Levacet al. To ensure appropriate rigour, this protocol uses the 20-item Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and extension for Scoping Reviews. Literature will be identified using a search strategy developed in consultation with a specialist research librarian at the university where the researchers are employed. Ten multidisciplinary databases will be independently searched by two researchers, and both researchers will screen for inclusion, and undertake the data extraction. The first author will perform a quality assessment of the articles that are selected for inclusion. A second researcher will complete a random audit of 20% of the included articles to assess for quality and suitability in answering the research questions. The first author will complete the analysis and synthesis of the data. A numerical and narrative synthesis of the included studies will be provided.Ethics and disseminationThe scoping review has been deemed as being exempt from ethical review as no data will be collected from human participants. The results of the scoping review may be published in a peer-reviewed journal, thesis, presented at relevant conferences, and shared with relevant knowledge users.

scholarly journals Enhancing Online Patient Support through Health-Care Knowledge in Online Health Communities: A Descriptive Study

Information ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donghua Chen ◽  
Runtong Zhang ◽  
Kecheng Liu ◽  
Lei Hou
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Patient Support ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Information User ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Health Communities ◽  
Knowledge Support

Online health communities (OHCs) should utilize health-care knowledge for enhancing online patient support. To examine the use of existing OHCs to identify the challenges and strategies of enhancing online patients’ decision-making support, we conducted a descriptive study to evaluate the information availability, user availability and knowledge usability in 100 carefully-selected health-related websites. On the basis of criteria for effective OHCs, we used three evaluation instruments for health-care professionals to review and score the websites. Questionnaire results were examined from the perspective of information, user and knowledge support. Results corroborate that over 80% of the websites facilitate effective social functions, whereas only 33% provide health-care decision-making services to online patients. Approximately 46% of them satisfy four or five effective OHCs’ criteria. Three of them only offer the functions of patients’ charts and journals to support health data management. Although the existing OHCs are facilitated with good social interaction and support, only a few can assist patients in making effective health-care decisions, not to mention properly using health-care knowledge support.

scholarly journals Development and Evaluation of the Canteen Connect Online Health Community: Using a Participatory Design Approach in Meeting the Needs of Young People Impacted by Cancer

Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Jennifer Cohen ◽  
Pandora Patterson ◽  
Melissa Noke ◽  
Kristina Clarke ◽  
Olga Husson
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Design ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Familial Cancer ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Implementation Evaluation ◽  
Online Health Community ◽  
Health Community ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Adolescent And Young Adults ◽  
Health Communities

Adolescent and young adults (AYAs) impacted by their own or familial cancer require information and peer support throughout the cancer journey to ameliorate feelings of isolation. Online Health Communities (OHC) provide social networks, support, and health-related content to people united by a shared health experience. Using a participatory design (PD) process, Canteen developed Canteen Connect (CC), an OHC for AYAs impacted by cancer. This manuscript outlines the process used to develop CC: (1) A mixed-methods implementation evaluation of Version I of CC (CCv.1); (2) Qualitative workshops utilizing strengths-based approaches of PD and appreciative inquiry to inform the development of CC Version 2 (CCv.2); quantitative implementation evaluation to assess the appropriateness, acceptability, and effectiveness of CCv.2. Through several iterations designed and tested in collaboration with AYAs, CCv.2 had improvements in the user experience, such as the ability to send a private message to other users and the site becoming mobile responsive. Results from the evaluation showed CCv.2 was appropriate for connecting with other AYAs. Most AYAs reported satisfaction with CCv.2 and a positive impact on their feelings of sadness, worry, and/or anxiety. CCv.2 fills an important service provision gap in providing an appropriate and acceptable OHC for AYAs impacted by cancer, with initial promising psychological outcomes.

scholarly journals How Potential New Members Approach an Online Community

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janghee Cho ◽  
Rick Wash
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Future Research ◽  
New Members ◽  
Initial Decision ◽  
The People ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
New Community

AbstractOnline communities, socio-technical systems where people interact with others, depend on new members coming to the community. While the majority of research in online communities relation to the recruitment of new members has focused on new members’ socialization and retention, little work has focused on how potential new members who are not yet a member of the community make the decision on whether they are willing to join in the online community. To understand this initial decision process, we investigated how potential new members build mental models of the online community from their first experience within the community, and how this process impacts the decision to continue participating in the community. We interviewed 31 potential new members of the online communities, Quora and Reddit, to better understand how they evaluate a new community. We found that the process of understanding a community involves orienting toward multiple different aspects of the community, including the content available on the community, the people who are already part of the community, and the technology interface and mechanisms that control the community. Participants who focused on consuming and enjoying content were much more likely to express an interest in future participation in these communities than participants who just evaluated the community, looking at the people in the community or the technology of the community. This extends previous considerations for recruiting new members in online communities. We conclude by discussing how our findings can have broad implications in developing successful online communities and suggesting future research efforts that could help understand potential new members.

Network Structure of an AIDS-Denialist Online Community: Identifying Core Members and the Risk Group

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (7) ◽  
pp. 688-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri G. Rykov ◽  
Peter A. Meylakhs ◽  
Yadviga E. Sinyavskaya
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Risk Group ◽  
Online Social Network ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Hiv Virus ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Aids Denialism

With rapid growth of online social network sites, the issue of health-related online communities and its social and behavioral implications has become increasingly important for public health. Unfortunately, online communities often become vehicles for promotion of pernicious misinformation, in particular, that HIV virus is a myth (AIDS denialism). This study seeks to explore online users’ behavior and interactions within AIDS-denialist community to identify and estimate the number of those, who potentially are most susceptible to AIDS-denialist arguments—“the risk group” in terms of becoming AIDS denialists. Social network analysis was used for examining the most numerous AIDS-denialist community (over 15,000 members) in the most popular Russian SNS “ VK.com .” In addition, content analysis was used for collecting data on attitudes toward AIDS-denialist arguments and participants’ self-disclosed HIV status. Two data sets were collected to analyze friendship ties and communication interactions among community members. We have identified the core of online community—cohesive and dedicated AIDS denialists, and the risk group: users who communicate with core members, and, thus, can be more susceptible to the AIDS-denialist propaganda and their health behaviors (e.g., refusing treatment). Analysis allowed to significantly reduce the target audience for possible intervention campaigns and simultaneously increase the accuracy of determining the risk group composition.

scholarly journals IoT Based Health—Related Topic Recognition from Emerging Online Health Community (Med Help) Using Machine Learning Technique

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pradeepa Sampath ◽  
Gayathiri Packiriswamy ◽  
Nishmitha Pradeep Kumar ◽  
Vimal Shanmuganathan ◽  
Oh-Young Song ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Health Community ◽  
Chi Squared ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Health Communities ◽  
Processing Techniques

The unprompted patient’s and inimitable physician’s experience shared on online health communities (OHCs) contain a wealth of unexploited knowledge. Med Help and eHealth are some of the online health communities offering new insights and solutions to all health issues. Diabetes mellitus (DM), thyroid disorders and tuberculosis (TB) are chronic diseases increasing rapidly every year. As part of the project described in this article comments related to the diseases from Med Help were collected. The comments contain the patient and doctor discussions in an unstructured format. The sematic vision of the internet of things (IoT) plays a vital role in organizing the collected data. We pre-processed the data using standard natural language processing techniques and extracted the essential features of the words using the chi-squared test. After preprocessing the documents, we clustered them using the K-means++ algorithm, which is a popular centroid-based unsupervised iterative machine learning algorithm. A generative probabilistic model (LDA) was used to identify the essential topic in each cluster. This type of framework will empower the patients and doctors to identify the similarity and dissimilarity about the various diseases and important keywords among the diseases in the form of symptoms, medical tests and habits.

Anonymity in Questions and Answers about Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 658-662
Author(s):  
Cheng Guo ◽  
Kelly Caine
Keyword(s):  
User Behavior ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Questions And Answers ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Health Communities ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Do So

Social Question & Answer (Q&A) sites are a unique source of health information that draw from personal, rather than professional experience. When people ask or answer questions about health using these sites, they may do so using their real name, or another type of identity such as pseudonymity (e.g., a username or nickname) or anonymity. People’s behavior may differ when they have a choice about which type of identity they choose, especially the context of different levels of sensitivity of content (e.g., health vs. non- health). In this work, we explore the relationship between different types of identity (e.g., anonymity and pseudonymity) and several Q&A metrics of user behavior on Yahoo Answers in the context of health and non-health content using path analysis. We find that health-related questions are more likely to be asked and answered anonymously. We also find that anonymous answers have more upvotes and downvotes than pseudonymous answers indicating more engagement. We conclude by suggesting that health Q&A sites and other online health communities may improve the quality of discussion by providing anonymity features and implementing moderation mechanisms.

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