Digital ethnography of online communities' response to awareness raising health related e-campaigns through social media

Abstract

The study focuses on the response of online communities to campaigns posted on social media to aware the people regarding health care. The purpose of this study was to explore the view point of online communities on the information available at social media networks to make people aware about the symptoms and dangers of diseases along with the preventive measures. Moreover the study endeavors to look into the attitude of online communities towards the prevention of those diseases as result of the awareness they receive through e-campaigns on social media. The study explores as to what kind of diseases or health issues are mostly discussed on the social media networks. Data was mainly collected through digital observations on facebook. Moreover in-depth interviews were conducted from social media users. Some of the interviews were conducted with the representatives of the organizations or departments who (ever) campaigned on social media on health related issues to know their experience with the online communities. The communities were approached through the groups and pages having information related to health care awareness or information about different diseases. The posts of these groups or pages were visited and the comments of page visitors were reviewed by the researcher. The comments were further divided into two parts (i) positive perceptions, and (ii) negative perceptions. Data was interpreted in Michel Foucault's theoretical perspective on Power/Knowledge. This study will serve as first digital ethnography of health related social media campaigns in the field of anthropology and aims to open new horizons for future researches in the field of digital anthropology and medical anthropology.