Social messaging for global health: lessons from Haiti

Rouhani, Shada A.; Marsh, Regan H.; Rimpel, Linda; Edmond, M; Julmisse, Marc; Checkett, Keegan A.

doi:10.7189/jogh.09.010308

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Messaging-only applications such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp were also not included in the definition of SM as they are considered social networking, distinct from SM [ 7 ]. Further, these applications are now treated as vital communication tools, often used in place of traditional text messaging [ 9 , 10 ], and thus would not be practical for abstinence.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social media is defined as the “interactive web and mobile platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, or exchange information, ideas, photos, or videos within a virtual network” [ 8 ] (p. 2). Research highlights a difference between SM and messaging-only applications, such as WhatsApp, which function as text messaging tools and thus constitute a separate domain from SM [ 7 , 9 , 10 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Roberts and Koliska’s [ 39 ] study investigated students going media-free for 24 h and found distress was the most common experience, including high FoMO and feeling isolated. These negative responses may be due to abstaining from all media including messaging, considered an essential communication tool vital for many young people’s sense of safety [ 9 , 10 , 40 ]. Furthermore, heightened distress and feelings of isolation may be a result of the exceptionally short abstinence period.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fear of Missing Out, Mental Wellbeing, and Social Connectedness: A Seven-Day Social Media Abstinence Trial

Brown

Kuss

2020

IJERPH

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Smartphones aid the constant accessibility of social media (SM) applications, and these devices and platforms have become a key part of our everyday lives and needs. Previous research has focused on the psychological impact of social media use (SMU) and SM abstinence has only received limited attention. Therefore, employing a combination of an experimental within-subjects mixed methodology using surveys to obtain both quantitative and qualitative data, this study aimed to compare psychosocial factors of fear of missing out (FoMO), mental wellbeing (MWB), and social connectedness (SC) before and after seven days of SM abstinence. Results revealed that participants (N = 61) experienced a significant increase in MWB and SC, and a significant decrease in FoMO and smartphone use following SM abstinence. There was a significant positive relationship between MWB and SC change scores and a significant negative relationship between SC and FoMO change scores. There were no significant differences in levels of SMU before abstinence or across genders in FoMO, MWB, and SC change scores. Thematic analysis revealed coping, habit, and boredom as motivations for SMU, and notification distractions presenting a challenge for successful abstinence from SM. Participants indicated that abstinence resulted in the perceived need to fill their time with non-SM applications. Finally, thematic analysis revealed mixed experiences of perceived connectivity in the absence of SMU. Findings present implications for the importance of unplugging from SM for temporary periods because scrolling through SM to fill time is a key motivator of SMU, and notifications encourage SMU and trigger FoMO.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fear of Missing Out, Mental Wellbeing, and Social Connectedness: A Seven-Day Social Media Abstinence Trial

Brown

Kuss

2020

IJERPH

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“…Mobile Health (mHealth) is gaining traction as a promising way to advance remote and continuous care during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 8 ]. Equipped with various communication features, such as instant text messages and voice and video calls, mHealth allows for telemedicine via real-time individual or group communication [ 9 ]. Patients can continue to receive standard clinical care while reducing physical crowding in hospital premises.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mHealth App to Facilitate Remote Care for Patients With COVID-19: Rapid Development of the DrCovid+ App

Tan¹,

Tan²,

Towle³

et al. 2023

JMIR Form Res

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Background The 2019 novel COVID-19 has severely burdened the health care system through its rapid transmission. Mobile health (mHealth) is a viable solution to facilitate remote monitoring and continuity of care for patients with COVID-19 in a home environment. However, the conceptualization and development of mHealth apps are often time and labor-intensive and are laden with concerns relating to data security and privacy. Implementing mHealth apps is also a challenging feat as language-related barriers limit adoption, whereas its perceived lack of benefits affects sustained use. The rapid development of an mHealth app that is cost-effective, secure, and user-friendly will be a timely enabler. Objective This project aimed to develop an mHealth app, DrCovid+, to facilitate remote monitoring and continuity of care for patients with COVID-19 by using the rapid development approach. It also aimed to address the challenges of mHealth app adoption and sustained use. Methods The Rapid Application Development approach was adopted. Stakeholders including decision makers, physicians, nurses, health care administrators, and research engineers were engaged. The process began with requirements gathering to define and finalize the project scope, followed by an iterative process of developing a working prototype, conducting User Acceptance Tests, and improving the prototype before implementation. Co-designing principles were applied to ensure equal collaborative efforts and collective agreement among stakeholders. Results DrCovid+ was developed on Telegram Messenger and hosted on a cloud server. It features a secure patient enrollment and data interface, a multilingual communication channel, and both automatic and personalized push messaging. A back-end dashboard was also developed to collect patients’ vital signs for remote monitoring and continuity of care. To date, 400 patients have been enrolled into the system, amounting to 2822 hospital bed–days saved. Conclusions The rapid development and implementation of DrCovid+ allowed for timely clinical care management for patients with COVID-19. It facilitated early patient hospital discharge and continuity of care while addressing issues relating to data security and labor-, time-, and cost-effectiveness. The use case for DrCovid+ may be extended to other medical conditions to advance patient care and empowerment within the community, thereby meeting existing and rising population health challenges.

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“…Despite the plethora of COVID-19 research concerning the infodemic, how do debunking messages about COVID-19 affect WhatsApp conversations is currently understudied. This question is important because, according to some studies, these messaging apps can exert much more social influence than social media sites (Rouhani et al, 2019;Yu and Poger, 2019). COVID-19 conversations on WhatsApp are understudied compared to studies on social media platforms like Twitter (see Ermakova et al, 2020;Jiang et al, 2021), as COVID-19 chats are rarer due to their closed nature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring how online responses change in response to debunking messages about COVID-19 on WhatsApp

Chen

Tan

et al. 2022

OIR

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PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a concurrent outbreak of false information online. Debunking false information about a health crisis is critical as misinformation can trigger protests or panic, which necessitates a better understanding of it. This exploratory study examined the effects of debunking messages on a COVID-19-related public chat on WhatsApp in Singapore.Design/methodology/approachTo understand the effects of debunking messages about COVID-19 on WhatsApp conversations, the following was studied. The relationship between source credibility (i.e. characteristics of a communicator that affect the receiver's acceptance of the message) of different debunking message types and their effects on the length of the conversation, sentiments towards various aspects of a crisis, and the information distortions in a message thread were studied. Deep learning techniques, knowledge graphs (KG), and content analyses were used to perform aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) of the messages and measure information distortion.FindingsDebunking messages with higher source credibility (e.g. providing evidence from authoritative sources like health authorities) help close a discussion thread earlier. Shifts in sentiments towards some aspects of the crisis highlight the value of ABSA in monitoring the effectiveness of debunking messages. Finally, debunking messages with lower source credibility (e.g. stating that the information is false without any substantiation) are likely to increase information distortion in conversation threads.Originality/valueThe study supports the importance of source credibility in debunking and an ABSA approach in analysing the effect of debunking messages during a health crisis, which have practical value for public agencies during a health crisis. Studying differences in the source credibility of debunking messages on WhatsApp is a novel shift from the existing approaches. Additionally, a novel approach to measuring information distortion using KGs was used to shed insights on how debunking can reduce information distortions.

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Social messaging for global health: lessons from Haiti

Cited by 8 publications

References 7 publications

Fear of Missing Out, Mental Wellbeing, and Social Connectedness: A Seven-Day Social Media Abstinence Trial

Fear of Missing Out, Mental Wellbeing, and Social Connectedness: A Seven-Day Social Media Abstinence Trial

mHealth App to Facilitate Remote Care for Patients With COVID-19: Rapid Development of the DrCovid+ App

Exploring how online responses change in response to debunking messages about COVID-19 on WhatsApp

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