JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Childhood and adolescent firearm injury and death have increased over the past decade and have remained as major public health concerns in the United States. Safe firearm storage has shown to be an effective measure to prevent firearm injury and death among youth. Social media has been used as an avenue to promote safe firearm storage, but perceptions of this tool still remain unknown.

Objective:

To determine receptiveness and responsiveness in promoting firearm lock box and trigger lock giveaway events on social media and describe

Methods:

We conducted a mixed-methods study combining a content analysis of Facebook comments, quantitative analysis on positive and negative feedback on social media and a descriptive analysis of event participant characteristics. Through a qualitative content analysis approach, we thematically coded comments from each event postings. Inter-rater reliability and Kappa statistics were calculated. Positive and negative feedback data were gathered. Prevalence of these measures was calculated, in addition, to calculating descriptive statistics for demographic characteristics gathered from event surveys. Chi-square and t-tests were used to examine whether there was a significant difference between collected measures based on how the participant found out about the event.

Results:

Among the 414 comments from 13 events, 7 themes emerged through the comment coding process with the most prevalent being “positive receptiveness” (71.0%). There was a greater proportion of positive feedback interactions compared to the negative ones. Among the 4,509 survey participants, approximately 35.7% found out about the event through social media. On average, the participants who found out about the event through social media were significantly younger than those who found out through other means (-6.4 years, 95% CI: [-5.5, -7.3]). A greater proportion of those who found out about the event through social media were female (54.7%) compared to those who found out through other means (32.9%; P <0.01).

Conclusions:

Though firearm storage can be a sensitive and controversial topic, there was positive receptiveness and responsiveness towards these events when they were promoted on social media. Social media has the ability to reach those who are younger and those who identify as females. Future studies should extend this research to find out whether or not there is a difference in these findings specifically comparing rural and urban settings.