Inside Technology: Opening the Black Box of Health-Website Configuration and Content Management

Esther Brainin and Efrat Neter
Additional contact information
Esther Brainin: Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ruppin Academic Center, 4025000 Emek Hefer, Israel
Efrat Neter: Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ruppin Academic Center, 4025000 Emek Hefer, Israel

Future Internet, 2014, vol. 6, issue 4, 1-27

Abstract: Given the existing divide related to Internet skills and types of Internet use, it is safe to assume that a large proportion of the population uses the Internet for health purposes in a partially productive fashion. We suggest that in addition to user characteristics, another factor that inhibits productive Internet use, and thus contributes to the existing gap, is related to the ways in which the technology is configured. The goal of this study was to explore the processes that webmasters and content managers use for constructing and producing, or selecting content, for health websites. Interviews conducted with 23 website builders and managers of websites that represent public and non-public health organizations revealed that they do not plan or conduct activities for content needs elicitation, either in the design stage or on an ongoing basis. Rather, these professionals rely on a “self-embodiment” standard, whereby their and their cohorts’ expectations determine the quality and functionality of the websites’ structure and content. Hence, target groups beyond their social sphere are disregarded, and instead of new opportunities, new cleavages are created. We recommended that government, public and non-public stakeholders work to establish construction standards, to ensure that health websites meet the needs of varied end-user populations.

Keywords: internet; social construction of technology; inequality; health; webmaster (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/6/4/773/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/6/4/773/ (text/html)

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:gam:jftint:v:6:y:2014:i:4:p:773-799:d:43374

Access Statistics for this article

Future Internet is currently edited by Ms. Grace You

More articles in Future Internet from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().