Social Media is Changing the Game
Health Communication and How Social Media
is Changing the Game
Written by Emily Souza
Health communication is an ever changing field; with new procedures, breakthroughs and technology constantly being tested and developed. Similarly, social media is also an ever changing catalyst in which patients, corporations, the general public, and health professionals can use to relay, and share this ever changing knowledge and information.
Social media has done wonders for medical use and patient care, and with it today, there is more outreach to a bigger audience, faster. “In the health communication community, there is a widespread assumption that recent advances in Internet technologies (Web 2.0), particularly the participative Internet, have transformed the pattern of communication, including health-related communications. For example, social scientists observed that social media have increased individuals’ connectivity and enabled users’ direct participation.” (Social Media Use in the United States, 2009.)
Because of faster access and outreach, health communication projects and promotions are becoming more relevant and prominent today; as people recognize that there are new opportunities to use social media to impact nation and worldwide health.
The importance of health communication is immense, with a great need to further interpret procedures, medication, treatments, and help create an understanding between patients, providers, and medical corporations. This communication is needed even more to help clarify things and provide comfort for instances such as long term illnesses, urgent care, and language or culture barriers.
Social media can provide so many things in terms of health communication. For patients, it can help describe and explain conditions, treatments, medication, and can give others personal and professional points of view.
“Internet-based social networks may increase perceived social support and interconnectivity among individuals...With the increase of user-generated content, information sharing is seen as more democratic and patient controlled, enabling users to exchange health-related information that they need and therefore making the information more patient/consumer-centered.” (Social Media Use in the United States, 2009.)
Although social media has provided people with a platform to communicate about issues, there is still much more to improve. Recent growth of social media is not uniformly distributed across age groups; therefore, health communication programs utilizing social media must first consider the age of the targeted population to help ensure that messages reach the intended audience. (Social Media Use in the United States, 2009.)
Unlike young people in today’s day and age, the older generations did not grow up learning with and using technology on an everyday basis.The majority of people using social media the most, are people ages 18-30, these are the people that the media outreach will most likely effect. However, there is a problem with the older patients, whom are more likely to have health issues and concerns, these are the people that are not being reached out to as much via social media.
We as communicators from all different backgrounds and ways of life are all affected by our health and healthcare in one way or another. To better understand one another and provide clearer, faster, and more empathetic communication throughout this field it is important to further push for better communication. By using social media, there is a catalyst created that provides these social platforms to be the “middle-man” in a space where terms, procedures, and conditions can be tricky to fully understand and comprehend. Social media is doing, and continues to do great things for the health care community; but it is up to us as co-creators and communicators to further push the development for this.
Written by Emily Souza
Source
Chou, Wen-ying Sylvia, et al. “Social Media Use in the United States: Implications for Health
Communication.” Journal of Medical Internet Research, Gunther Eysenbach, 2009,
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