The impact of social media on health related outcomes behaviour in South Africa .

Abstract

The social media landscape in South Africa is continually growing and has presented vast opportunities for the healthcare industry. This research report explored the behavioural change impact that a health awareness social media campaign had on its followers.

The research method was qualitative research and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in order to gain a better understanding of the impact the @BrothersSA account had. The participants interviewed were individuals who followed the Brothers For Life (BFL) account on the social media platform, Twitter.

The results indicated mainly two important findings. Firstly, an individual’s social network has influence over their behaviour and secondly, social networking sites play a crucial role in behavioural change. From the data, the participants displayed that there was knowledge gained as a direct result of BFL on social media and furthermore this newfound information was enacted upon.