In What Motivates Health Information Exchange in Social Media? The Roles of the Social Cognitive Theory and Perceived Interactivity, Hsien-Cheng Lin and Chun-Ming Chang analyze the factors of health information exchange and the different types of relationships that social media users have when seeking or sharing health related information. They conduct a study in Taiwan to further research the significance of interactivity and outcome expectations when it comes to health information exchange. 

This study is conducted with 207 participants, with 112 females and 95 males over the age of 50 and with similar educational backgrounds. Using the different classified interactional relationships, human-to-human and human-to-information, they were studied to see the positive and negative effects of their participation on Facebook when it comes to health information exchange. These two relationships are referred to as the different types of perceived interactivity. Along with the Social Cognitive Theory, which emphasizes that human behavior is influenced and controlled by personal cognition in a social environment, these authors looked to figure out what the preexisting factors of these exchanges were. The human-to-human interaction is defined as “the use of social media for sending and receiving information and the reciprocal responsiveness of other users” while the human-to-information interaction is “the acquisition and sharing of information through social media”. The results of this study indicate that these interactions, as well as the expectation of self-confidence and social relationships create a positive influence on health information exchange. Specifically, the human-to-human interactions are most influential in that users feel much more comfortable and willing to communicate with each other when they are given the opportunity to create these social relationships. 

Though this study is helpful in analyzing the motivations and benefits of health information exchange on social media, the results of these findings are very ambiguous. It is unclear whether these results are true and valid for everyone, because everyone interprets these exchanges differently. One suggestion made by the authors in order to make users more comfortable in sharing and exchanging information was the use of emojis in the exchange. They believe that this is a much more relaxed form of communicating and would influence the willingness of users to communicate on a platform concerning their health. They also made note of the fact that this type of exchange is different than others in that it is more private and significant to the user than other types of communication. With that in mind, any opportunity and suggestion to increase this communication and access to information would be fundamental in contributing to the overall health of many users.