Social Media and Public Health: Opportunities and Challenges

• Other Authors: Ahmed, Wasim (Editor), Vidal-Alaball, Josep (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Basel, Switzerland MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2021
• Subjects: Public health & preventive medicine; social media; disordered eating behaviours; body image; female; university students; telemedicine; carbon dioxide; air pollutants; vehicle emissions; primary care; machine learning; teleconsultation; remote consultation; classification; public health; short video; social network; TAM; cost analysis; health technology assessment; provider-to-provider telemedicine; telehealth; economic analysis; questionnaires and surveys; validation studies; health personnel; electronic nicotine delivery systems; smoking; twitter; poor doctor-patient relationship; healthcare consultation; mobile context; computer-mediated communication; point-of-care systems; ultrasonography; traffic-related pollution; primary health care; acceptability of health care; surveys and questionnaires; health communication; Spanish official medical colleges; stakeholders; Twitter; systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); network analysis; topic modeling; text analysis; online media; vaccination; social marketing; stroke; prehospital emergency care; training; stroke code; large vessel occlusion; prehospital scales; hearing loss; latent topic; LDA; social Q& A; public voice; public health emergency; policy evolution; product innovation; cooperative governance; COVID-19; coronavirus; masks; transmission
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Social media has the potential to provide rapid insights into unfolding public health emergencies such as infectious disease outbreaks. They can also be drawn upon for rapid, survey-based insights into various health topics. Social media has also been utilised by medical professionals for the purposes of sharing scholarly works, international collaboration, and engaging in policy debates. One benefit of using social media platforms to gain insight into health is that they have the ability to capture unfiltered public opinion in large volumes, avoiding the potential biases introduced by surveys or interviews. Social media platforms can also be utilised to pilot surveys, for instance, though the use of Twitter polls. Social media data have also been drawn upon in medical emergencies and crisis situations as a public health surveillance tool. A number of software and online tools also exist, developed specifically to aide public health research utilising social media data. In recent years, ethical issues regarding the retrieval and analysis of data have also arisen.