Summary: | Introduction
While social media are commonly used in public health campaigns,
there is a gap in our understanding of what happens after the campaign is seen
by the target audience. This study aims to understand how the Shisha No Thanks
campaign video was received by the Facebook audience by analyzing Facebook
comments posted to it. Specifically, this study aims to determine whether the
Facebook audience accepted or rejected the campaign’s message.
Methods
A sample of the Facebook comments was extracted, and the study team,
which included cultural support workers, developed content categories consistent
with the research question. Each comment was then coded by three team members,
and only assigned a category if there was agreement by at least two members.
Results
Of the 4990 comments that were sampled, 9.1% (456) accepted the
campaign message, 22.9% (1144) rejected the message, 21.8% (1089) were
unclear, and 46.1% (2301) contained only tagged names. Of the sample, 2.8%
(138) indicated the commenter took on board the campaign message by expressing
an intention to stop smoking shisha, or asking a friend to stop smoking shisha. Of
the comments that showed rejection of the campaign, the majority were people
dismissing the campaign by laughing at it or expressing pro-shisha sentiments.
Conclusions
This study demonstrates that conducting content analyses of social
media comments can provide important insight into how a campaign message is
received by a social media audience.
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