The effects of visual formats on Facebook health-related posts: evidence from eye movement analysis

Abstract

PurposeThis study aimed to provide user-centered evidence for health professionals to make optimal use of images for the effective dissemination of health information on Facebook (FB).Design/methodology/approachUsing an eye-tracking experiment and a survey method, this study examined 42 participants' reading patterns as well as recall and recognition outcomes with 36 FB health information posts having various FB post features.FindingsThe findings demonstrated that FB posts with text-embedded images received more attention and resulted in the highest recall and recognition. Meanwhile, compared to text-embedded images, visual only images yielded less effective recall of information, but they caught the viewers' attention; graphics tended to attract more attention than photos. For effective communication, the text features in FB posts should align with the formats of the images.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study provide practical implications for health information disseminators by suggesting that text-embedded images should be used for effective health communication.Originality/valueThis study provided evidence of users' different viewing patterns for FB health information posts and the relationship between FB post types and recall and recognition outcomes.

Editorial: Special selections on contemporary social media and social network research

“…Yoon and Syn (2023) used eye-tracking devices and a survey questionnaire to investigate people's reading patterns related to reading Facebook health information posts. They showed that it is more effective to use text-embedded images would provide better results in recall and recognition.…”

Evaluating Facebook as aids for learning Japanese: learners' perspectives

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Information Transmission and Visual Image System Construction on WeChat Public Accounts of Colleges and Universities -- A Case Study on Jiangsu University

“…People are offered unprecedentedly convenient access to reading and socializing regardless of their levels of education, income, or occupation [3] . Social media has become one of the main channels through which information is distributed, and it can provide real-time information to the public in a cost-effective manner [5] . Thus, colleges and universities have to maintain good social images and reputation through social media, and actively use social networks to build and popularize their unique visual images.…”