Evaluating Messaging on Prenatal Health Behaviors Using Social Media Data: Systematic Review

Social media platforms are increasingly being used to disseminate messages about prenatal health. However, to date, we lack a systematic assessment of how to evaluate the impact of official prenatal health messaging and campaigns using social media data.

This study aims to review both the published and gray literature on how official prenatal health messaging and campaigns have been evaluated to date in terms of impact, acceptability, effectiveness, and unintended consequences, using social media data.

A total of 6 electronic databases were searched and supplemented with the hand-searching of reference lists. Both published and gray literature were eligible for review. Data were analyzed using content analysis for descriptive data and a thematic synthesis approach to summarize qualitative evidence. A quality appraisal tool, designed especially for use with social media data, was used to assess the quality of the included articles.

A total of 11 studies were eligible for the review. The results showed that the most common prenatal health behavior targeted was alcohol consumption, and Facebook was the most commonly used source of social media data. The majority (n=6) of articles used social media data for descriptive purposes only. The results also showed that there was a lack of evaluation of the effectiveness, acceptability, and unintended consequences of the prenatal health message or campaign.

Social media is a widely used and potentially valuable resource for communicating and evaluating prenatal health messaging. However, this review suggests that there is a need to develop and adopt sound methodology on how to evaluate prenatal health messaging using social media data, for the benefit of future research and to inform public health practice.