JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Diabetes patient associations and other groups of people with diabetes from around the world are present on social media. Although active participation and engagement in these diabetes social media groups has been mostly linked to positive effects, very little is known about the contents that are shared on these channels or what type of posts engage their users the most.

Objective:

The objective of this study is to analyze the type of contents that were shared over 3 years in three diabetes social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) of a diabetes association, and the users’ engagement with these posts (likes, comments, and shares).

Methods:

All social media posts published in the period 2017-2019 were extracted. Two independent reviewers classified the text message of each post according to its main topic into seven possible categories. The inter-rater reliability was calculated using Cohens’ kappa. Regression analyses were carried out to analyze the effects of contents’ topics, social media channel and post’ features as predictors of users’ engagement (likes, comments, and shares).

Results:

A total of 1449 messages were posted. “Interview and personal stories” posts received 211% more likes, 206% more comments, and 212% more shares than miscellaneous posts, all P<.001, and “Awareness days and other celebrations” posts were 41% more likely to receive likes, P<.001. On the other hand, posts on “Research and innovation” received 31% fewer likes (P<.001), 35% fewer comments (P=.020), and 25% fewer shares (P=.031). “Health education” posts received 38% fewer comments (P=.003) , but were shared 39% more times (P=.007). Facebook and Instagram posts were both 35 times more likely to receive likes, and 60 times and almost 10 times more likely to receive comments respectively than posts on Twitter, P<.001. Posts with video had 3 times increased chance of receiving likes, almost 4 times increased chance of receiving comments, and 2.5 times increased chance of being shared, all P<.001. Including both video and emoji in a post increased the chances of receiving likes by almost 7 times, P<.001. And by including only an emoji the chances of posts receiving likes and being shared increased by 71%, and 244% respectively, P<.001.

Conclusions:

Diabetes social media users seem to be least engaged in a type of post that a priori could be linked to greater empowerment: research and innovation on diabetes, and health education. Diabetes social media groups, public health authorities, and other stakeholders interested in sharing research and innovation contents and promoting health education on social media should consider including videos and emojis in their posts, and preferably publish on popular and visual-based social media channels, such as Facebook and Instagram to increase user engagement.