The prevalence of social question answering in healthcare social media.

Abstract

Social question answering (SQA) services are dedicated platforms for users to respond to other users’ questions, rate and comment on questions and answers, and build community. In this study, we analyze health-care SQA services to understand the extent to which they are prevalent in health-care social media. First, we compare blogs, videos, and SQA services in five popular health-care social media sites using three media richness features: interactivity, adaptiveness, and channel capacity. Second, we interpretively analyze SQA services using five themes of Medicine 2.0: social networking, participation, collaboration, apomediation, and openness. The result supports SQA services as an effective media for health-care communication and empowerment of users. We present our findings for consumers and decision-makers to understand the role of SQA services for improving user-centered services.