Abstract:

Strategical Importance of Social Media Usage in Health Communication: An Evaluation of Non-Profit Organizations of Cardiac Health in TurkeyRecently, advances in technology have led to increased communication and information flow in the field of health communication. Specifically, developments in social networking have led to a more productive target group of people who generate the content of the information, and disseminate it actively. Today, nonprofit health organizations, in addition to public and private institutions that provide health care, have an important tasks of creating public consciuosness about health issues, and eventually changing individual's health care behavior. The goal of this study is to explore how nonprofit heart health organizations in Turkey utilise social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, in their efforts to communicate with the public in order to create conscioussnes and awareness. In this study, content analysis is utilised as the methodology. The communication content of the Facebook and Twitter accounts of Turkish Heart Foundation, Turkish Society of Cardiology, and Turkish Society of Cardiology between February 2010 and November 2012 have been analyzed. This study reveals that, event hough utilisation of social media has a strategic importance in health communication, Facebook and Twitter are not employed actively and effectively by these nonprofit organizations. Consequently, there are significant deficiencies in promoting consciousness by public awareness about heart health issues.

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