Previously submitted to: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (no longer under consideration since Apr 17, 2020)
Date Submitted: Mar 8, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Scientific Dissemination on Facebook: The Performance of Public Health Journals
ABSTRACT
Background:
Since it was created, social networks on the internet have attracted millions of users who have incorporated them into their routines and use them as the primary source of news, texts, concepts, definitions and any need for information. In scientific communication, the innovations of science, then restricted to researchers networks, with online social networks came to the domain of society.
Objective:
This study characterized the Facebook pages of Brazilian scientific journals in the field of public health.
Methods:
The social network activities of four journals were studied with regard to the number of followers, type and frequency of posts, topics and user interactions (likes, comments and shares). In interviews, the journal editors indicated the motivation to use online social networks to disseminate their articles and described the available infrastructure for this purpose.
Results:
More aesthetically complex posts, with explanatory texts and images, draw more attention and, therefore, generate more interaction than simpler posts, i.e., those containing links only. The findings indicate that there is interest in scientific dissemination on Facebook on the part of editors; in several cases, the editors themselves perform this activity. In Brazil, the majority of public health journals do not have an established editorial policy for social networks, mainly because they do not have marketing teams or financial and human resources to improve online social networks.
Conclusions:
The academic editors agree with the importance of these highly popularized networks in disseminating scientifically validated information on public health to society.
Citation
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Copyright
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