Social Media Influencers and Social Support: An Environmental Breast Cancer Intervention with Motherhood Bloggers and Their Readers

Abstract

Participants within online communities often discuss a variety of health issues as well as seek and provide social support to each other (Wright & Bell, 2003). Many of these online communities have key individuals who serve as opinion leaders (or infl uencers) who disseminate information about health issues and encourage supportive interaction among members of their community (Burke-Garcia, Kreps, & Wright, 2018; Moorhead et al., 2013). Some researchers have developed interventions where they have collaborated with these online opinion leaders/infl uences (such as bloggers) to help spread health information and foster social support exchanges among community members (e.g., Hales, Davidson, & Turner-McGrievy, 2014; Shi, Poorisat, & Salmon, 2018).

Such studies have found that blogs, in particular, can be a useful social media platform for disseminating information about a variety of health issues, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, and other health issues (Burke-Garcia et al., 2018; Keating & Rains, 2015; Moorhead et al., 2013). Bloggers provide unique content for their readers as compared to other types of online communities (Keating & Rains, 2015). Bloggers often have a keen understanding of their readers’ health needs and beliefs (Burke-Garcia et al., 2018; Keating & Rains, 2015), and they typically deliver information, and other types of social support, in varied forms (e.g., text, multimedia, links to web resources), which is shared, interactively, via bloggers’ posts and readers’ comments (Burke-Garcia et al., 2018; Moorhead et al., 2013).