School of Social Work, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
School of Social Work, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Dec 9;23(12):e30315. doi: 10.2196/30315.
Social media is increasingly being leveraged by researchers to engage in public debates and rapidly disseminate research results to health care providers, health care users, policy makers, educators, and the general public. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the use of social media for digital knowledge mobilization, drawing particular attention to TikTok and its unique potential for collaborative knowledge mobilization with underserved communities who experience barriers to health care and health inequities (eg, equity-seeking groups). Setting the TikTok platform apart from other social media are the unique audiovisual video editing tools, together with an impactful algorithm, that make knowledge dissemination and exchange with large global audiences possible. As an example, we will discuss digital knowledge mobilization with trans and nonbinary (trans) communities, a population that experiences barriers to health care and is engaged in significant peer-to-peer health information sharing on the web. To demonstrate, analytics data from 13 selected TikTok videos on the topic of research on gender-affirming medicine (eg, hormonal therapy and surgeries) are presented to illustrate how knowledge is disseminated within the trans community via TikTok. Considerations for researchers planning to use TikTok for digital knowledge mobilization and other related community engagement with equity-seeking groups are also discussed. These include the limitations of TikTok analytics data for measuring knowledge mobilization, population-specific concerns related to community safety on social media, the spread of disinformation, barriers to internet access, and commercialization and intellectual property issues. This paper concludes that TikTok is an innovative social media platform that presents possibilities for achieving transformative, community-engaged knowledge mobilization among researchers, underserved health care users, and their health care providers, all of whom are necessary to achieve better health care and population health outcomes.
社交媒体正越来越多地被研究人员用来参与公共辩论,并迅速将研究结果传播给医疗保健提供者、医疗保健用户、政策制定者、教育工作者和公众。本文为越来越多的关于利用社交媒体进行数字知识传播的文献做出了贡献,特别关注了 TikTok 及其与医疗服务不足的社区(如寻求公平的群体)进行合作知识传播的独特潜力。TikTok 平台与其他社交媒体的不同之处在于其独特的视听视频编辑工具,以及强大的算法,这使得与全球大量受众进行知识传播和交流成为可能。例如,我们将讨论与跨性别和非二元性别(跨性别)社区进行数字知识传播,这是一个面临医疗障碍并在网络上进行大量同行间健康信息共享的群体。为此,我们将展示关于性别肯定医学研究的 13 个选定 TikTok 视频的分析数据(例如,激素治疗和手术),以说明知识如何通过 TikTok 在跨性别社区中传播。本文还讨论了计划使用 TikTok 进行数字知识传播和与其他寻求公平的群体进行相关社区参与的研究人员需要考虑的问题。这些问题包括 TikTok 分析数据在衡量知识传播方面的局限性、与社交媒体社区安全相关的特定人群关注、虚假信息的传播、互联网接入障碍以及商业化和知识产权问题。本文的结论是,TikTok 是一个创新的社交媒体平台,为研究人员、医疗服务不足的医疗保健用户及其医疗保健提供者之间实现变革性的、社区参与的知识传播提供了可能性,所有这些都是实现更好的医疗保健和人口健康结果所必需的。
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