Department of New Media and Communication, South China University of Technology.
Center for Public Health Risk Surveillance and Information Communication in Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, China.
Health Commun. 2023 Oct;38(11):2430-2440. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2022.2074779. Epub 2022 May 15.
Despite its prevalence, research on health information sharing via social network sites (SNSs) is mostly descriptive and often lacks a coherent theoretical framework. By integrating social support and socioemotional selectivity theory, the present study takes a uses and gratifications approach to examining what factors affected health information sharing via WeChat, the most widely used SNS in China. Results of an online survey ( = 519) show that emotional and informational support provisions both predicted health information sharing via WeChat. In addition, age moderated the effects of both support provision. While the relationship between emotional support provision and health information sharing was stronger among older adults, the effect of informational support provision was marginally significantly stronger among younger adults. These findings provide additional understanding of health information sharing via SNSs by revealing its emotional meaning and demonstrating different sharing motivations in different age groups, which offers implications on health information design, dissemination, and discussions in different groups.
尽管社交网络（SNS）上的健康信息共享已十分普遍，但相关研究大多仍停留在描述性阶段，往往缺乏一个连贯的理论框架。本研究通过整合社会支持和社会情绪选择理论，采用使用与满足方法，考察了哪些因素影响了中国最常用的 SNS 平台微信上的健康信息共享。对在线调查（ = 519）的结果表明，情感和信息支持的提供均预测了微信上的健康信息共享。此外，年龄调节了这两种支持提供的效果。虽然在老年人中，情感支持的提供与健康信息共享之间的关系更强，但在年轻人中，信息支持的提供的效果略显著更强。这些发现通过揭示 SNS 上健康信息共享的情感意义，并展示不同年龄组的不同共享动机，为不同群体的健康信息设计、传播和讨论提供了启示。
