# 9 cool public health and social media articles

Plugged In: Remote Australian Youth and Digital Culture

    By: Inge Kral

For most Indigenous people in central and northern Australia the encounter with the western world has been relatively recent. Yet even in the most remote Indigenous communities, global influences pervade everyday life and new forms of media and communications are reshaping youth culture. This paper draws on ethnographic case study data from research with Indigenous youth who are participating in non-formal community-based media and music production and digital community archiving projects in remote regions. For these young adults the generational shift has been rapid, as many of their elders once lived a pre-contact nomadic existence. Now they are firmly part of global youth culture, taking on the role of mediating between old cultural knowledge and new digital technologies. Such generationally differentiated arenas of social practice are also changing the ways in which youth in remote Indigenous Australia are using oral and written language.

Understanding Social Networking: On young people’s construction and co construction of identity online

• By: Malene Charlotte Larsen

As digital spaces online social networking sites offer an exceptional arena for the individual and social lives of young people today. In this paper I illustrate how young people maintain friendships and thereby continuously construct and co construct their identity online. Based on my analysis I argue that social networking sites can be seen as a continuation of young people’s everyday (offline) lives for which reason the majority of them strive to be as sincere as possible – in short to be themselves. The paper is based on an extensive ethnographical investigation of a Danish social networking site.

Gone Viral? Heard the buzz? A guide for public health practitioners and researchers on how Web 2.0 can subvert advertising restrictions and spread health information

• By: B Freeman and S Chapman

Many nations have banned or curtailed advertising of potentially harmful products to protect public health, particularly in the area of chronic disease control. The growth in Internet-based marketing techniques is subverting these advertising regulations. Explosive rises in use of social networking and user generated content websites is further fuelling product promotion through electronic media. In contrast there is a very limited body of public health research on these ‘‘new media’’ advertising methods. This paper provides an overview of these advertising methods and details examples relevant to chronic disease control. There is a vast untapped potential for health practitioners and researchers to exploit these same media for health promotion.

Opportunities and Challenges for Social Policy: Engaging Youth Online

• By: Michael de Percy

The benefits of a free, globally available and rapidly expanding communication network waits for the next generation of social policy practitioners who dare to challenge the traditional approaches to citizen engagement.

Public Health and Web 2.0

• By: Michael Hardey

This article examines the nature and role of Web 2.0 resources and their impact on health information made available though the internet. The transition of the Web from version one to Web 2.0 is described and the main features of the new Web examined. Two characteristic Web 2.0 resources are explored and the implications for the public and practitioners examined. First, what are known as ‘user reviews’ or ‘user testimonials’, which allow people to comment on the health services delivered to them, are described. Second, new mapping applications that take advantage of the interactive potential of Web 2.0 and provide tools to visualize complex data are examined. Following a discussion of the potential of Web 2.0, it is concluded that it offers considerable opportunities for disseminating health information and creating new sources of data, as well as generating new questions and dilemmas.

Young Adults on the Internet: Risk Behaviours for Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV

• By: Mary MacFarlane, Sheana Bull and Cornelis Rietmeijer

To examine the sexual behaviors and related risk factors for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among young adults who seek sex partners on the Internet. Young adults who seek sex on the Internet report substantially different sexual behavior patterns than young adults who do not seek sex on the Internet. Young adults with online partners reported sexual behaviors similar to older respondents who used the Internet.

Web 2.0 and beyond: risks for sexually transmitted infections and opportunities for prevention

• By: Cornelis Rietmeijer and Mary MacFarlane

The continued growth of the Internet as a communication medium has had majorimplications for the transmission and prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The purpose of this review is to describe recent developments in this rapidly changing environment. The review highlights recent developments and identifies potential avenues for future research and program development. The increasing interactivity of the Internet, known as ‘Web 2.0’, especially the user-driven social networking sites that allow users to share near limitless amounts of personal information with their peers in the network, is compounding the potential of the Internet as an environment for both STI risk and prevention.

Development of Grid-Like Applications for Public Health Using Web 2.0 Mashup Techniques

• By: Matthew Scotch, Kevin Y Yip and Kei-Hoi Cheung

Development of public health informatics applications often requires the integration of multiple data sources. This process can be challenging due to issues such as different file formats, schemas, naming systems, and having to scrape the content of web pages. A potential solution to these system development challenges is the use of Web 2.0 technologies. In general, Web 2.0 technologies are new internet services that encourage and value information sharing and collaboration among individuals. In this case report, we describe the development and use of Web 2.0 technologies including Yahoo! Pipes within a public health application that integrates animal, human, and temperature data to assess the risk of West Nile Virus (WNV) outbreaks. The results of development and testing suggest that while Web 2.0 applications are reasonable environments for rapid prototyping, they are not mature enough for large-scale public health data applications. The application, in fact a “systems of systems,” often failed due to varied timeouts for application response across web sites and services, internal caching errors, and software added to web sites by administrators to manage the load on their servers. In spite of these concerns, the results of this study demonstrate the potential value of grid computing and Web 2.0 approaches in public health informatics.

The disparity Information and Communication Technology for developing  countries  has in the delivery  of Healthcare Information

• By: Prajesh Chhanabhai and Alec Holt

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have merged into the world of healthcare slowly but surely. However, the marriage between the use of technology and its full impact in the health sector has not been fully realised. The focus of this paper is to highlight the impact if ICT on revolutionising access to healthcare information and thus quality of health for populations of the developing world. This paper highlights the importance of being able to access health information and how traditional media methods have been utilised to allow this within developing country setting, highlighting the clear digital divide. The paper then addresses the impact of convergent communication technologies and mobile technologies in providing  a means of addressing existing healthcare problems within a developing country setting.