A Study on the Responsiveness of Local Health Departments that Use Facebook

Fallon L. Fleming () and Schmalzried Hans D.
Additional contact information
Fallon L. Fleming: Distinguished Teaching Professor of Public Health, Bowling Green State University, 234 Health Center, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA
Schmalzried Hans D.: Professor of Public Health, Bowling Green State University, 231 Health Center, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2013, vol. 10, issue 1, 201-208

Abstract: Local health departments (LHDs), in concert with many other organizations, have begun to explore the potential of social media sites during emergencies. The most widely discussed and adapted social media site is Facebook. Apparently, once a decision to include Facebook is made, the Facebook logo is displayed on the organization’s homepage. The focus of this study was to assess the presence of Facebook on LHD websites and then determine whether LHDs actually used them as tools for communicating with the public or planned to do so during emergency or disaster situations. Secondary objectives were to test for the presence of two-way communications and to measure how quickly LHDs with two-way Facebook walls responded to a request for information received after regular office hours. We looked at 1970 LHD websites. Of those, 489 (24.6%) displayed the Facebook logo; 458 (93.7%) had a wall; 208 had walls with bi-directional (inbound and outbound) capability. A message was posted on each of the 208 bi-directional Facebook walls. Of the 208 LHDs receiving a message, 25 (12.0%) sent responses. The mean time for a response was 77.7±94.2 h.

Keywords: emergency notification; Facebook; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsem-2012-0066 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:johsem:v:10:y:2013:i:1:p:201-208:n:15

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jhsem/html

DOI: 10.1515/jhsem-2012-0066

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management is currently edited by Irmak Renda-Tanali

More articles in Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().