Topic of Research: Social Media and Healthcare

My research focuses on investigating the effects of social media in healthcare. I seek to investigate how the content posted on these platforms influences the way people think about healthcare and how their decisions might be influenced. I also wish to look at how, based on how algorithms work, these people keep getting exposed to the same kind of information, preventing them from being exposed to information that does not align with their beliefs, causing a bubble of like-minded people and information that suits their ideals, regardless if it is right or not. The purpose of this is to see how the information people are exposed to via social media affects their opinion regarding healthcare subjects. 

So far, the searches have been incredibly useful. This is a relatively new field of study, so there is not much information available but there are many articles and research that deal with similar subjects and provide useful information. It also helped me refine my research so that I could get the most accurate results and articles that I would actually use.

Subject Research:

• Database: Health and Medicine (Academic)
• Search term: Healthcare and social media
• Limiters:
  • Full text
  • Subject: Social media
• Source:
  • Alsughayr, A. (2015). Social media in healthcare: Uses, risks, and barriers. Saudi Journal of Medicine & Medical Sciences, 3(2), 105. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A412975892/HRCA?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-HRCA&xid=bb21e6fa
• Results: 168
• Overall, the search was somewhat useful. Many of the articles focused on how certain groups use social media or the effects online content is having on mental health and others. While that is all interesting, it doesn’t exactly fit my research subject. However, as I continued looking I found a few articles that provided good information that might be useful in the future. 

Citation Tracing

• Database: Health and Medicine
• Source: Bantimaroudis, P. (2021). Conspiratorial Discourses on Social Media: Agendamelding Explorations and COVID-19. International journal of communication [Online], 3621+.https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A679119473/HRCA?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-HRCA&xid=7a36e35c
• The article has a total of 32 references. 
  • The majority of the references are about public opinions and how content influences them. Many of them also look at social media, which means many of them will be useful for my own research. I will look into seeing if I can access these articles and look into them.