Peer-to-peer sharing in public health interventions: strategies when people share health-related personal information on social media

Abstract

Purpose: As sharing on social media has become an integrated part of everyday life, health and public health actors have started to show interest in the potential of people's peer-to-peer sharing of health-related personal information (HRI) for health interventions. In this article we focus on how people make sense of sharing HRI on social media.

Methods: Twenty-two people between the ages 40 and 60 who had taken part in a regional health intervention were interviewed. Using theories about social media sharing, we explore their understandings and negotiations about whether, how much, and how to share HRI and discuss the results in relation to peer-to-peer sharing as a strategy in interventions.

Results: We identified three aspects that were perceived as particularly risky: loss of control, effects on identity, and affecting others negatively, along with strategies that were used to manage risks in practice: avoiding sharing, allocating, and embedding HRI.

Conclusions: By allocating and embedding HRI, people can unlock motivating affordances for health work. However, strategies to manage risks can also be counterproductive. For actors to provide equality in health promotion, initiatives that include social media sharing need to be mindful of the sometimes counterproductive effects this may have on people's engagement.

Keywords: Social media; health information; health interventions; older people; personal health data; public health; social media dilemmas; social media sharing.