JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Non-profit organizations have always played an important role in health promotion. Social Media (SM) are widely used in health promotion efforts. However, there is a lack of evidence on how decisions regarding the use of SM are undertaken by non-profit organizations who want to increase their impact in terms of health promotion.

Objective:

To understand why and how non-profit health care organizations put forth SM strategies to achieve health promotion goals.

Methods:

Multiple-case study design, using in-depth interviews and a content analysis of each SM strategy were employed to analyze the use of SM tools by six North-American non-profit organizations (NPO) dedicated to cancer prevention and management.

Results:

The resulting process model demonstrates how SM strategies are enacted by NPO to achieve health promotion goals. They put forth three types of SM strategies relative to their use of existing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) - replicate, transform and/or innovate—each affecting the content, format and delivery of the message differently. Organizations make sense of the SM innovation in complementarity with existing ICT.

Conclusions:

For NPO, implementing an SM strategy can help achieve health promotion goals. The process of SM strategy implementation could benefit from understanding the rationale, the opportunities, challenges, and the potentially complementary role of existing ICT strategies.