These days, people are inclined to look for health information on social media—but they don’t visit all sites equally. Researchers looked at LinkedIn, a professional networking site, to find out how health topics—as an example, health literacy—are communicated and engaged with.
The authors aimed at the hashtag #HealthLiteracy, a help to users in searching and sharing health information understanding content. As opposed to other platforms such as Twitter (rebranded as X), LinkedIn has not been studied extensively for that purpose. Thus, the authors examined 370 posts in a week to observe what is being talked about and what others say in response.
They found that most of the posts were about elder care, including services for the aged and care transitions between healthcare settings. The most common words were words like “care”, “solutions”, and “aged” that indicate a very strong focus on professional caregiving. Interestingly, #dementia and #personcentredcare were also common hashtags, but broader tags such as #publichealth were not present.
The majority of users responded to posts with a “like” and not by commenting or sharing. This indicates that LinkedIn users are likely to respond passively, possibly because it’s a professional network and users are more reserved.
This study is important as it shows that LinkedIn can actually be used effectively for focused health communication—especially in targeting professionals, teachers, and policymakers. It’s a groundbreaker and can potentially pave the way for using LinkedIn more effectively in public health campaigns.
Full text: Siva Sai Chandragiri, Bikash Baral, Fabian Peter Hammerle, Olena Litvinova, Elisa Opriessnig, Maima Matin, Himel Mondal, Michel-Edwar Mickael, Maria Kletecka-Pulker, Atanas G. Atanasov, Thomas Wochele-Thoma, Exploring #HealthLiteracy on LinkedIn: a first look at health hashtag engagement in a professional social media context, Frontiers in Digital Health, 7, https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2025.1622983.