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Contemporary Consumer Health Informatics pp 235–251Cite as

The Prevalence of Social Question Answering in Health-Care Social Media

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Part of the book series: Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age ((Healthcare Delivery Inform. Age))

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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business Information Technology and Logistics, RMIT International University Vietnam, 702 Nguyen Van Linh Blvd., District 7, HCMC, Vietnam

    Dr. Blooma John

  2. University of Southern Queensland, 60 Baker Ave, 3102, Kew East, Australia

    Prof. Raj Gururajan

  3. Deakin University and Epworth HealthCare, 60 Baker Ave, 3102, Kew East, Australia

    Prof. Nilmini Wickramasinghe

Authors
  1. Dr. Blooma John
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  2. Prof. Raj Gururajan
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  3. Prof. Nilmini Wickramasinghe
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Blooma John .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Deakin University and Epworth HealthCare, Kew East, Victoria, Australia

    Nilmini Wickramasinghe

  2. The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Indrit Troshani

  3. McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

    Joseph Tan

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John, B., Gururajan, R., Wickramasinghe, N. (2016). The Prevalence of Social Question Answering in Health-Care Social Media. In: Wickramasinghe, N., Troshani, I., Tan, J. (eds) Contemporary Consumer Health Informatics. Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25973-4_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25973-4_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25971-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25973-4

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