Online Opinion Leaders in the Health Promotion Digital Era
Abstract
Health opinion leaders have widely embraced social media for health promotion and public health communication which can make a strong influence on the public decision making. However, despite the growing relevance of public health threats such as infectious diseases, pandemic influenza and natural disasters, research has paid little attention to the qualities of opinion leaders. Moreover, there is limited evidence that public health organisations use social media appropriately to engage in meaningful conversations with audiences. Thus, the aims of the study are to describe principles of communication practised by online opinion leaders to promote health issues, to discuss the strategies of social media used, to explain the opinion leaders’ influence attributes in health decision making and finally to develop a model of online opinion leader in the contemporary health promotion era. Content analysis was conducted on Facebook postings of five selected health opinion leaders. In addition, semi-structured interviews with 10 followers were conducted. The findings of the study revealed that there are three principles of communication practised by online opinion leaders, which are language, interaction and themes. There are three strategies opinion leaders use to influence the public: social connectivity, social support and social consultation. Furthermore, there are five opinion leaders’ attributes that influence the public’s decision making, namely personality, authenticity, trust/credibility, professional knowledge and social position. The model would be beneficial in educating and guiding the current public health opinion leaders in order to establish health and social well-being.
Keywords: Online opinion leader, online health communication, public health, two-step flow theory, decision making.
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Creswell, J. W., Hirose, M. (2019). Mixed methods and survey research in family medicine and community health. Family Medicine Community Health, 7, e000086. https://doi.org/10.1136/fmch-2018-000086
Dubois, E., Minaeian, S., Labelle, A. P., & Beaudry, S. (2020). Who to trust on social media: How opinion leaders and seekers avoid disinformation and echo chambers. Social Media + Society, 6(2), 1–13.
Feng, Y., Chen, H. & Kong, Q. (2020): An expert with whom I can identify: The role of narratives in influencer marketing. International Journal of Advertising, 40(7), 972-993. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2020.1824751
Haigh, M. M., & Brubaker, P. (2012). Facebook: Examining the information presented and its impact on stakeholders. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 18(1), 52-69.
Hefler, M., Kerrigan, V., Henryks, J., Freeman, B., & Thomas, D. P. (2019). Social media and health information sharing among Australian Indigenous people. Health Promotion International, 34, 706-715.
Jenkins, E. L., Ilicic, J., Barklamb, A. M., McCaffrey, T. A. (2020). Assessing the credibility and authenticity of social media content for applications in health communication: Scoping review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(7), 2-16.
Katz, E., & Lazarsfeld, F. P. (1955). Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
Kostygina, G., Tran, H., Binns, S., Szczypka, G., Emery, S., Vallone, D., & Hair, E. (2020). Boosting health campaign reach and engagement through use of social media influencers and memes. Social Media + Society, April-June, 1–12.
Lee, M. T., & Theokary, C. (2021). The superstar social media influencer: Exploiting linguistic style and emotional contagion over content? Journal of Business Research, 132, 860-871.
Li, F., & Du, T. C. (2011). Who is talking? An ontology-based opinion leader identification framework for word-of-mouth marketing in online social blogs. Decision Support Systems, 51(2011), 190-197.
Lia, Z. Z., & Ding, Z. H. (2012). Exploring cyber opinion leaders based on social network analysis: Sampling college student employment public opinion. 2011 International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (ICCSIT 2011) IPCSIT vol. 51.
Lin, J. L., Huang, Y. P., Zhang, J. M., & Chen, R. J. (2018). Identifying opinion leaders in social media during brand crises: A case study on Haidilao Hot Pot. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 8(3), 24.
Luqiu, L. R, Schmierbachb, M., & Ng, Y. L. (2019). Willingness to follow opinion leaders: A case study of Chinese Weibo. Computers in Human Behaviour, 101, 42-50.
Majali, T., Alsoud, M., Omar, A., & Alhassan, I. (2021). Social media use as health awareness tool: A study among healthcare practitioners. Multicultural Education, 7(2), 1-6.
Malaysians Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). (n.d.). Internet users survey 2018. Cyberjaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan.
Mohamad, E., Ahmad, A. L., Mohamed Salleh, S., & Wan Sulaiman, U. K. (2017). Breaking the traditional communication flow: Exploration of social media opinion leaders in health. SHS Web of Conferences, i-COME'16.
Parsons, A. (2013). Using social media to reach consumers: A content analysis of official Facebook pages. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 17(2), 27-36.
Patten, C. A., Balls-Berry, J. E., Cohen, E. L., Brockman, T. A., Valdez, S. M., West, I. W., Cha, J, Zavala, R. M. G., & Eder, M. (2021). Feasibility of a virtual Facebook community platform for engagement on health research. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, 5(1), E85. https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2021.12
Rashid, A. A., Mohamad, I., & Mohd Haris, A. F. (2021). The role of social media in making an impact to health knowledge and behaviour on COVID-19 in MalaysiaMalaysian Journal Medicine Science, 28(3), 155–157. https://doi.org/10.21315/mjms2021.28.3.15
Savolainen, R. (2021). Expert power as a constituent of opinion leadership: A conceptual analysis. Information Research, 26(2), paper 898. https://doi.org/g68d
Viswanath, B., Mislove, A., Cha, M. Y., & Gummadi, K. P. (2009). On the evolution of user interaction in Facebook. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Workshop on Online Social Networks, WOSN 2009, Barcelona, Spain, August 17, 2009.
Yousuf, H., Corbin, J., Sweep, G., Hofstra, M., Scherder, E., van Gorp, E., Zwetsloot, P. P., Zhao, J. Y., van Rossum, B., Jiang, T., Lindemans, J. W., Narula, J., & Hofstra, L. (2019). Association of a public health campaign about Coronavirus disease 2019 promoted by news media and a social influencer with self-reported personal hygiene and physical distancing in the Netherland. JAMA Network Open, 3(7), e2014323.
Zhang, J., & Ma, Y. R. (2021). Study on impact of information characteristic of opinion leaders on customer brand engagement - An empirical research based on China’s social e-commerce. Platforms Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica, 30(2), 312-324. https://www.revistaclinicapsicologica.com/archivesarticle.php?id=462
Zhu, L., Yin, G. P., & He, W. (2014). Is this opinion leader’s review useful? Periheral cues for online review helpfulness. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 15(4), 267-280.
Zhu, Y. G., Guan, M. F., & Donovan, E. (2020). Elaborating cancer opinion leaders’ communication behaviors within online health communities: Network and content analyses. Social Media + Society, 6(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/gmzn56
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
e-ISSN: 2289-1528