Mpox on Instagram: Content Analytic Study

Mpox was declared a public health emergency of international concern in 2022. Instagram is widely used by age groups and communities disproportionately affected by mpox; yet platform-specific evidence on mpox information characteristics and engagement remains limited.

The aim of this study is to characterize sources, content, and engagement features of mpox-related Instagram posts, to describe prevention and treatment framing, and to compare the top 10% most-liked posts with the remaining corpus.

We retrieved English-language public Instagram posts via CrowdTangle containing "mpox" or "monkeypox" dated May 5, 2022, to January 17, 2023 (initial N=18,616). Using a pretested, deductive codebook adapted from prior Instagram health studies, 2 coders completed 2 pilot rounds; variables with low agreement were excluded. A randomized analytic sample of 1000 posts was coded for source type, content features, and prevention/treatment framing. Descriptive statistics were computed. For engagement contrasts, we compared the top 10% most-liked posts with the bottom 90% using tests of differences in independent proportions (mean differences [MD] with P values).

Most posts originated from organizations (760/1000, 76%) versus individuals (240/1000, 24%). Organizational sources most commonly included businesses (436/760, 57.4%) and news/media outlets (401/760, 52.8%); government (174/760, 22.9%), nonprofits (131/760, 17.3%), and health care organizations (70/760, 9.2%) were less frequent. About one-third of posts cited a source (344/1000, 34.4%), most often the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/other federal entity. Posts predominantly used illustrated images/infographics (827/1000, 82.7%); photos appeared in 47.3% (473/1000) and videos in 12.4% (124/1000) of posts. Prevention content appeared in 38.4% (384/1000) of posts, most commonly vaccination (684/1000, 68.5% of prevention posts), followed by avoiding close contact (145/1000, 14.5%), avoiding contact with objects (83/1000, 8.3%), abstaining from sexual activity (76/1000, 7.6%), and condom use (13/1000, 1.3%); 28.9% (289/1000) of prevention posts noted barriers. Treatment mentions were uncommon (25/1000, 2.5% traditional biomedical; 2/1000, 0.2% alternative). Compared with the bottom 90%, the top 10% most-liked posts (1) were more likely to originate from public figures/celebrities among individuals (MD=-0.591; P<.001) and from businesses (MD=-0.299; P<.001) or news/media (MD=-0.350; P<.001) among organizations; (2) were less likely to be from government (P<.001) , nonprofit (P=.006), or health care organizations (P=.005); and (3) more often included nonmoving images (MD=-0.119; P=.024), visible lesion depictions (MD=-0.081; P=.035), prevalence mentions (MD=-0.180; P<.001), and citations (MD=-0.162; P=.001).

During the initial outbreak period, the highly engaged mpox content on Instagram skewed toward posts by public figures and news/business accounts and toward static, citation-bearing visuals that included prevalence context and occasionally lesion imagery. Public-health communicators seeking reach on Instagram should prioritize clear static infographics with explicit source citation and epidemiologic context and consider copublishing with trusted creators and news outlets, while addressing access barriers highlighted in prevention posts.