微信朋友圈中健康信息传播行为研究

An Empirical Study on Healthcare Information Diffusion Behavior in WeChat Moments

随着人们对健康信息需求的日益增加以及社交媒体平台的迅速发展,学者和医疗健康从业人员越来越关注健康信息在社交媒体中的传播。在Facebook、Twitter和WhatsA pp等众多社交媒体平台中,微信朋友圈因其将人际传播和大众传播相结合的特性而引起广泛关注。同时,健康信息的传播主要依赖于健康信息接收者在朋友圈子中的传播意愿。然而,很少有研究探讨微信(特别是朋友圈)中电子健康信息的哪些特点促使用户对其进行传播。聚焦依托医疗健康类微信公众号的信息传播,以信息传播相关研究为理论基础,从传播者内在动机的视角,研究微信用户在朋友圈传播电子健康信息的行为的影响机制。梳理信息传播和人际交流的相关研究,从信息内容的社会特征、情绪特征、功能特征3个维度中选取7个变量,提出研究假设和模型。进一步,选取医疗健康类微信公众号上发布的健康信息,采用大规模在线问卷调查的方法收集数据,并通过R统计软件对数据进行广义线性回归分析,以验证假设。研究结果表明,信息的社会特征(有趣性、新颖性、正确性)、情绪特征(令人惊叹性、积极性、富含情绪性)和功能特征(有用性)均对电子健康信息在微信朋友圈中的传播具有显著积极的影响,对电子健康信息的传播行为影响最大的因素为富含情绪性、有用性和有趣性。研究结论为电子健康服务平台的运营策略提供一定的实践建议,运营者在撰写健康类文章时应当提高话题和内容的有趣性和新颖性,保证信息的正确性,注重通过情绪的渲染使信息内容富有感染力,尤其积极情绪和令人惊叹的情绪,并突出对用户的实用价值。通过以上方式,可使受众乐于阅读并转发健康信息,提高电子健康服务平台的用户参与度和关注度。

Due to the increasing demands for healthcare information and the rapid development of social media platforms,researchers and practitioners pay more and more attention on healthcare information diffusion in social media. In this paper,healthcare information diffusion refers to content receivers＇ willingness to transmit online healthcare information. Among a variety of social media platforms（ e. g.,Facebook,Twitter,Whatsapp）,WeChat Moments have received a great deal of attention as for its combination of interpersonal communication and mass communication. However,investigating the characteristics of online healthcare information that triggers people to diffuse healthcare information in WeChat Moment platform is still in the early stage.Focusing on healthcare-related information promoted by WeChat Official Accounts,this study examines the factors influencing WeChat users＇ intention to share this kind of information in WeChat Moments from the perspective of information transmitters＇ motivation. Drawing upon prior research on information diffusion and interpersonal communication,seven characteristics from three dimensions of information content（ i. e.,social characteristics,emotional characteristics and functional characteristics） are selected to build the research model and hypotheses. Based on the data collected from a large sample of WeChat users through an online survey,we conduct generalized linear regression analysis to test the research model and hypotheses using R statistical software. The results show that interesting,novelty,accuracy,awe,positivity,emotionality and usefulness all have significant positive effects on users＇ intention to share healthcare information in WeChat Moments. Among these factors,emotionality,usefulness and interesting are the most important ones.This study can provide three contributions to the related literature. Firstly,this study examines the diffusion of healthcare information and takes WeC hat Moments as the research context which has not been much researched so far. Secondly,we explore the effects of content features on healthcare information transmission from the perspective of information transmitters＇ motivation.Thirdly,this study takes sharing intention instead of sharing numbers as the dependent variable to measure the intention of the transmitter. Meanwhile,this study can provide some guidelines for the operation strategy of online healthcare service providers.When phrasing or framing healthcare-related articles,operators should try to draw greater interest and novelty of the content,ensure the accuracy of the information,evoke more positive emotion especially awe,and highlight the practical values to increase users＇ perceived usefulness. Hence,the audience could be more willing to read and share healthcare related information,and user participation on online healthcare service platforms could also get improved.