JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Social media is an essential tool of Health organizations, who use this platform to deliver evidence-based information, educate the public, dispel myths, and promote a healthier, more informed society.

Objective:

To categorize health organizations' content on social media into topics, examine public engagement, sentiment and emotional responses to these topics and identify gap in fear between health organizations' messages and public response.

Methods:

Real data was collected from the official Instagram accounts of health organizations worldwide. The BERTopic algorithm for topic modeling was used to categorize health organizations' posts into distinct topics. For each identified topic, we analyzed the engagement metrics (number of comments and likes) of posts categorized under the same topic, calculating the average engagement received. Additionally, we examined the sentiment and emotional content of both posts and responses within the same topic, providing insights into the distributions of sentiment and emotions for each topic. Particular attention was paid to the presence of the fear emotion in the posts and responses.

Results:

A total of 6,082 random posts and 82,982 comments were collected from the official Instagram accounts of eight health organizations. The study reveals that topics related to COVID-19, vaccines, and humanitarian crises (such as the Ukraine conflict and the war in Gaza) generated the highest engagement. Our sentiment analysis of the responses to health organizations' posts showed that topics related to vaccines and Monkeypox generated the highest percentage of negative responses. Fear was the dominant emotion expressed in the posts text, while the public's responses showed more varied emotions, with anger notably high in discussions around vaccines. Gaps were observed between the level of fear conveyed in posts published by health organizations and the in the fear conveyed in public’s responses to such posts especially regarding mask-wearing during COVID-19 and the influenza vaccine.

Conclusions:

This study underscore the importance of transparent communication that consider the emotional and sentiment-driven responses of the public on social particularly regarding vaccines. Understanding the psychological and social dynamics associated with public interaction with health information online can help health organizations achieve public health goals, fostering trust and efficiency, countering misinformation, and promoting informed health behavior.