Understanding public interest and needs in health policies through the application of social network analysis on a gover
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Understanding public interest and needs in health policies through the application of social network analysis on a governmental Facebook fan page Hsiang-Min Huang1 and Ching-Ju Chiu2*
Abstract Background: This study analyzed the interactions between agencies, policies, and the interest of the public using a social network analysis. Methods: Open data on the 2017 Facebook fan page of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MoHW) in Taiwan, including 18,193 messages, were analyzed by conducting a social network analysis, NodeXL (Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel), creating visualized explorations using size volumes to present the degree of strength between agencies and policies to further calculate the network centrality indicators of agencies and policies. Results: Agencies of the “Social and Family Affairs Administration” and “Health Promotion Administration” contributed the most policy posts. The policy of “Physical and mental health promotion” entailed the most agencies to be involved. The “Department of Nursing and Health Care” received the largest public response, for which “Long-term care” received the most public interest. Conclusions: A social network analysis of fan page of Taiwan’s top level health government agency can reveal the government’s most emphasized core policies, the strength of correlations between agencies and policies, and provide an understanding of public interest toward the policies. Keywords: Health and welfare agencies, Facebook, Social network, Policy announcement, Public interest
Background National promotions related to health policies are often announced to the public through press releases, press conferences, or website announcements; however, public access to this information is mostly passive and limited, or portions of the information may be used to misconstrue policy by certain agents to mislead the public. However, with the continuous advancement of * Correspondence: [email protected] 2 Institute of Gerontology, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
technology and the peak penetration rate of internet usage, the public can easily obtain complete information from social networks. Also, posts on social media are often accompanied by images, making them easy for the public to understand and increasing the view rate. Related data pointed out that of social media networks, Facebook has the highest growth, nearly 80% of Taiwan’s population uses Facebook to collect or share information in 2016 [1]. Many for-profit organizations have grasped this trend and have adjusted their marketing and operating strategies, and Taiwan’s government departments have also broken out of the traditional mold and
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproductio
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