Gualano Maria Rosaria, Bert Fabrizio, Gili Renata, Andriolo Violetta, Scaioli Giacomo, Siliquini Roberta
Dipartimento di Scienze della Sanità Pubblica e Pediatriche, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italia.
Ig Sanita Pubbl. 2015 Jul-Aug;71(4):361-8.
The "Ice Bucket Challenge" was an activity launched to promote awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourage donations to research for this disease. The campaign went viral on social media during July to August 2014. It consisted in nominating people and challenging them to donate 100 dollars to the ALS Association or pour a bucket of ice water over their head and post the video on the web. Participants in turn then had to challenge others to do the same. The initiative was hugely successful, involved millions of people and, just in the US, collected 35 times more money than in the same time period in 2013. We analyzed possible factors that determined the success of this initiative, to identify strengths and weaknesses of the activity and evaluate the possibility of applying the same model to promote public health interventions. Several features of the challenge were identified as strengths: the involvement of wellknown people from different contexts, the "public platform" which triggers a positive combination of competitiveness, social pressure and narcissism, the chain-letter like method of nomination, the ironic and entertaining nature of the performance. Besides these strengths, weaknesses were also identified: information spread via social media can only partially reach potential donors and supporters, due to the digital divide phenomenon which excludes people who do not have web access. Also, it is not possible to predict if the message will be long-lasting or will cease shortly after the end of the campaign. The latter could be acceptable for fund-raising, where the aim is simply to collect as much money as possible, but not for a public health intervention program, whose success requires that the intended message has a long-lasting effect to produce an effective change in people's behavior. Despite the above-mentioned limits, social networks undeniably show great potential to spread messages to the community and to involve a large number of people. Their use as a complementary tool to increase the effectiveness of public health campaigns should therefore be encouraged.
“冰桶挑战”是一项旨在提高对肌萎缩侧索硬化症（ALS）的认识并鼓励为该疾病研究捐款而发起的活动。该活动在2014年7月至8月期间在社交媒体上迅速传播。它包括指定人员并要求他们向ALS协会捐赠100美元，或者将一桶冰水浇在自己头上，并将视频发布到网上。参与者接着必须依次挑战其他人做同样的事情。该倡议非常成功，涉及数百万人，仅在美国，筹集的资金就比2013年同期多35倍。我们分析了决定该倡议成功的可能因素，以确定该活动的优点和缺点，并评估应用相同模式促进公共卫生干预措施的可能性。该挑战的几个特点被确定为优点：来自不同背景的知名人士的参与、引发竞争、社会压力和自恋积极结合的“公共平台”、类似连锁信的提名方式、表演的讽刺性和娱乐性。除了这些优点，也发现了缺点：由于数字鸿沟现象排除了没有网络接入的人，通过社交媒体传播的信息只能部分地到达潜在捐赠者和支持者。此外，无法预测该信息是否会持久，还是会在活动结束后不久就停止。对于筹款来说，后者可能是可以接受的，因为其目的只是尽可能多地筹集资金，但对于公共卫生干预计划来说则不行，其成功需要预期信息产生持久影响，以在人们的行为上产生有效的改变。尽管有上述限制，但社交网络无疑显示出向社区传播信息并让大量人员参与的巨大潜力。因此，应鼓励将其作为一种补充工具来提高公共卫生运动的有效性。
