Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Sep 19, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 22, 2018 - Nov 17, 2018
Date Accepted: May 14, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
How CDCs can use WeChat official accounts for better health information dissemination in China: an analysis of factors affecting user engagement
ABSTRACT
Background:
Smart phones and mobile applications (apps) have become new channels and tools for information acquisition and exchange. In China, with the growing popularity of WeChat and WeChat official accounts (WOAs), health promotion agencies have an opportunity to use them for successful information distribution and diffusion online.
Objective:
We aimed to explore the features frames of articles “pushed” by WOAs of Chinese provincial CDCs and to identify features that are associated with user engagement.
Methods:
We searched and subscribed to 28 WOAs of provincial CDCs, and considered all the articles that they pushed from January 1 to December 31, 2017 as research objects. We developed a features frame for each article and used a pre-designed questionnaire to record information on each article. Descriptive statistics were generated for six article features, and the Kruskal–Wallis test was used to compare the amount of reading and liking for each feature category. Two-category univariate logistic regression and multivariable logistic regression were conducted to explore associations between the features of the articles and user engagement, operationalized as reading level and liking level.
Results:
All provincial CDC WOAs provided a total of 5,976 articles in 2017. The median amount of reading was 551.5 and the median amount of liking was 10. For the amounts of reading and liking, there were statistically significant differences among the categories of six article features; the P values were all less than 0.001. Multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that article content, article type, communication skills, the number of marketing elements, and article length were associated with reading level and liking level. However, title type was only associated with liking level.
Conclusions:
How social media can be used to best achieve health information dissemination and public health outcomes is a topic of much discussion and study in the public health community. Given the lack of related studies based on WeChat or official accounts, we conducted this study and found that article content, article type, communication skills, the number of marketing elements, article length and title type were associated with user engagement. Our study may provide public health and community leaders with insight into the diffusion of important health topics of concern.
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