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A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion
BACKGROUND: In recent years social networking sites (SNSs) have grown rapidly in popularity. The popularity of these sites, along with their interactive functions, offer a novel environment in which to deliver health promotion messages. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which SNSs ar...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155501/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21777470 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-583 |
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author | Gold, Judy Pedrana, Alisa E Sacks-Davis, Rachel Hellard, Margaret E Chang, Shanton Howard, Steve Keogh, Louise Hocking, Jane S Stoove, Mark A |
author_facet | Gold, Judy Pedrana, Alisa E Sacks-Davis, Rachel Hellard, Margaret E Chang, Shanton Howard, Steve Keogh, Louise Hocking, Jane S Stoove, Mark A |
author_sort | Gold, Judy |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In recent years social networking sites (SNSs) have grown rapidly in popularity. The popularity of these sites, along with their interactive functions, offer a novel environment in which to deliver health promotion messages. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which SNSs are currently being used for sexual health promotion and describe the breadth of these activities. METHODS: We conducted a systematic search of published scientific literature, electronic sources (general and scientific search engines, blogs) and SNSs (Facebook, MySpace) to identify existing sexual health promotion activities using SNSs. Health promotion activities were eligible for inclusion if they related to sexual health or behaviour, utilised one or more SNSs, and involved some element of health promotion. Information regarding the source and type of health promotion activity, target population and site activity were extracted. RESULTS: 178 sexual health promotion activities met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review; only one activity was identified through a traditional systematic search of the published scientific literature. Activities most commonly used one SNS, were conducted by not-for-profit organisations, targeted young people and involved information delivery. Facebook was the most commonly used SNS (used by 71% of all health promotion activities identified), followed by MySpace and Twitter. Seventy nine percent of activities on MySpace were considered inactive as there had been no online posts within the past month, compared to 22% of activities using Facebook and 14% of activities using Twitter. The number of end-users and posts in the last seven days varied greatly between health promotion activities. CONCLUSIONS: SNSs are being used for sexual health promotion, although the extent to which they are utilised varies greatly, and the vast majority of activities are unreported in the scientific literature. Future studies should examine the key factors for success among those activities attracting a large and active user base, and how success might be measured, in order to guide the development of future health promotion activities in this emerging setting. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3155501 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-31555012011-08-13 A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion Gold, Judy Pedrana, Alisa E Sacks-Davis, Rachel Hellard, Margaret E Chang, Shanton Howard, Steve Keogh, Louise Hocking, Jane S Stoove, Mark A BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: In recent years social networking sites (SNSs) have grown rapidly in popularity. The popularity of these sites, along with their interactive functions, offer a novel environment in which to deliver health promotion messages. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which SNSs are currently being used for sexual health promotion and describe the breadth of these activities. METHODS: We conducted a systematic search of published scientific literature, electronic sources (general and scientific search engines, blogs) and SNSs (Facebook, MySpace) to identify existing sexual health promotion activities using SNSs. Health promotion activities were eligible for inclusion if they related to sexual health or behaviour, utilised one or more SNSs, and involved some element of health promotion. Information regarding the source and type of health promotion activity, target population and site activity were extracted. RESULTS: 178 sexual health promotion activities met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review; only one activity was identified through a traditional systematic search of the published scientific literature. Activities most commonly used one SNS, were conducted by not-for-profit organisations, targeted young people and involved information delivery. Facebook was the most commonly used SNS (used by 71% of all health promotion activities identified), followed by MySpace and Twitter. Seventy nine percent of activities on MySpace were considered inactive as there had been no online posts within the past month, compared to 22% of activities using Facebook and 14% of activities using Twitter. The number of end-users and posts in the last seven days varied greatly between health promotion activities. CONCLUSIONS: SNSs are being used for sexual health promotion, although the extent to which they are utilised varies greatly, and the vast majority of activities are unreported in the scientific literature. Future studies should examine the key factors for success among those activities attracting a large and active user base, and how success might be measured, in order to guide the development of future health promotion activities in this emerging setting. BioMed Central 2011-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC3155501/ /pubmed/21777470 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-583 Text en Copyright ©2011 Gold et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Gold, Judy Pedrana, Alisa E Sacks-Davis, Rachel Hellard, Margaret E Chang, Shanton Howard, Steve Keogh, Louise Hocking, Jane S Stoove, Mark A A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion |
title | A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion |
title_full | A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion |
title_fullStr | A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion |
title_full_unstemmed | A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion |
title_short | A systematic examination of the use of Online social networking sites for sexual health promotion |
title_sort | systematic examination of the use of online social networking sites for sexual health promotion |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155501/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21777470 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-583 |
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