JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The volume of online drug promotion has grown over time, and social media has become a source of information about prescription drugs for many consumers. Pharmaceutical companies currently present risk information about the prescription drugs they promote in a variety of ways within and across social media platforms. There is scarce research on consumers’ interactions with prescription drug promotion on social media, particularly on which features may facilitate or inhibit consumers’ ability to find, review, and comprehend drug information. This is concerning because it is critical for consumers to know and weigh drug benefits and risks to be able to make informed decisions regarding their medical treatment.

Objective:

We aimed to develop an understanding of the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of social media pages and posts created by pharmaceutical companies to promote drugs and how UI/UX design features impact consumers’ interactions with drug information.

Methods:

We conducted in-person interviews with 54 consumers segmented into groups by device type (laptop or mobile phone), social media platform (Facebook or Instagram), and age. Interviewers asked study participants to navigate to and review a series of four pages and three posts on their assigned device and platform. Interviewers encouraged participants to “think aloud” as they interacted with the stimuli during a brief observation period. Following each observation period, participants were asked probing questions. An analyst reviewed video recordings of the observation periods to abstract quantitative interaction data on whether a participant clicked on or viewed risk information at each location it appeared on each page. Participants’ responses were organized in a metamatrix, which we used to conduct thematic analysis.

Results:

Observational data revealed that 59% of participants using Facebook and 70% of participants using Instagram viewed risk information in at least one possible location on average across all pages tested during the observation period. There was not a single location across the Facebook pages that participants commonly clicked on to view risk information. However, a video with scrolling risk information attracted more views than other features. On Instagram, at least half of participants consistently clicked on the highlighted story with risk information across the pages. Although thematic analysis showed that most participants were able to identify the official pages and risk information for each drug, auto-scrolling text and text size posed barriers to identification and comprehensive review for some participants. Participants generally found it more difficult to identify the drugs’ indications than risks. Participants using Instagram more frequently reported challenges identifying risks and indications compared to those using Facebook.

Conclusions:

UI/UX design features can facilitate or pose barriers to users’ identification, review, and comprehension of the risk information provided on prescription drugs’ social media pages and posts. Clinical Trial: Not applicable