Health education and promotion of #PhysicalActivity on Twitter before and during COVID-19

Zachary S Farley; Kalyn McDonough; Elizabeth A Richards; Carissa R Smock

doi:10.1177/00178969231154076

Health education and promotion of #PhysicalActivity on Twitter before and during COVID-19

Health Educ J. 2023 Apr;82(3):286-296. doi: 10.1177/00178969231154076. Epub 2023 Feb 19.

Authors

Zachary S Farley¹, Kalyn McDonough², Elizabeth A Richards³, Carissa R Smock⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Education, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
² Department of Social Work, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
³ School of Nursing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
⁴ School of Business and Economics, National University, San Diego, CA, USA.

Abstract

Objective: Twitter, a microblogging service, allows users to post short messages (tweets) and link posts through hashtags, creating online communities to enable dissemination of health education. The objective of this descriptive study was to examine Twitter's #PhysicalActivity health education and promotion efforts, including differences in response before (March 2019-February 2020) and during (March 2020-February 2021) the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design setting and methods: A codebook was developed to conduct a quantitative content analysis of #PhysicalActivity tweets before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Twitter's Advanced Search parameters included minimum 1 reply, 25 likes and 5 retweets. Tweets were double-coded for user characteristics, community response, tweet elements (video, photo, link, questions, events, original text, survey/response, journal article, infographic) and intended audience. T-tests examined differences in researcher-generated NET response (replies + retweets + likes) between COVID-19 and comparison years.

Results: Data were collected from 400 tweets. Eighty percent of tweets were from personal accounts, with over half indicating the possession of a health professional degree. Twenty-nine percent of tweets gave behavioural recommendations of which 56.8% provided a rationale. Nearly all used at least two components, text and photos most common. The general public was the most intended audience with health professionals second. While the NET response was greater during COVID-19 (M = 139.6, SD = 156.8) than prior to it (M = 116.8, SD = 105.1), the difference was not statistically significant (p = .091).

Conclusion: Twitter platform provided an opportunity to disseminate health education, specifically for the promotion of physical activity, while adhering to public health recommendations to #StaySafeStayHome. Our findings provide insights into engaging this online community to inform future physical education and promotion dissemination.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Coding instrument; health education; health promotion; physical activity; social media.