The Use of Facebook Advertising for Communicating Public Health Messages: A Campaign Against Drinking During Pregnancy in New Zealand

Social media is gaining recognition as a platform for delivering public health messages. One area attracting attention from public health researchers and professionals is Facebook's advertising channel. This channel is reported to have a broad reach and generate high user engagement with the di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:JMIR public health and surveillance 2017-08, Vol.3 (3), p.e49-e49
Main Authors: Parackal, Mathew, Parackal, Sherly, Eusebius, Shobhit, Mather, Damien
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol
Audiences
Data mining
Diabetes
Health promotion
Health surveillance
Investigations
Medical screening
Metadata
Online advertising
Original Paper
Pregnancy
Public health
Regression analysis
Social networks
Standard deviation
User behavior
User generated content
Verbal communication
Womens health
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Summary:Social media is gaining recognition as a platform for delivering public health messages. One area attracting attention from public health researchers and professionals is Facebook's advertising channel. This channel is reported to have a broad reach and generate high user engagement with the disseminated campaign materials. However, to date, no study has examined the communication process via this channel which this study aimed to address. The specific objectives of the study were to (1) examine user engagement for a public health campaign based on the metadata provided by Facebook, (2) analyze comments generated by the campaign materials using text mining, and (3) investigate the relationship between the themes identified in the comments and the message and the sentiments prevalent in the themes that exhibited significant relationships. This study examined a New Zealand public health pilot campaign called "Don't Know? Don't Drink," which warned against drinking alcohol during pregnancy. The campaign conveyed the warning through a video and three banner ads that were delivered as news feeds to women aged 18-30 years. Thematic analysis using text mining performed on the comments (n=819) identified four themes. Logistic regression was used to identify meaning-making themes that exhibited association with the message. The users' engagement was impressive with the video receiving 203,754 views. The combined likes and shares for the promotional materials (video and banner ads) amounted to 6125 and 300, respectively. The logistic regression analysis showed two meaning-making themes, namely, risk of pregnancy (P=.003) and alcohol and culture (P
ISSN:2369-2960
2369-2960
DOI:10.2196/publichealth.7032