Italian Social Marketing Association - Newsletter 226

The popularity of social media sites and the ease at which its data is available means these platforms are increasingly becoming primary sources for social research. Wasim Ahmedpresents a quick look at some of the tools available to social scientists for analysing social media data and also reflects on the limitations of the platforms and the methods used for this type of research.

I have a social media research blog where I find and write about tools that can be used to capture and analyse data from social media platforms. My PhD looks at Twitter data for health, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I am increasingly asked why I am looking at Twitter, and what tools and methods there are of capturing and analysing data from other platforms such as Facebook, or even less traditional platforms such as Amazon book reviews.

The information age is drowning us in a deluge of data, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate facts from pseudo-facts, objective from biased sources, and at the same time, we’re all being asked to do more at home and at work. Daniel Levitin reviews the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory, presents the differences between mind-wandering mode and task-focused mode and offers advice for how to boost creativity and limit exhausting brain-shifting distractions.

This article provides an analysis of the relationship between annual advertising expenditures and sales, using a time series regression procedure, for beer, wine, and liquor sold in the United States from 1971 to 2012. Information from these four decades provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships of numerous variables with aggregate alcohol category sales. Even though per capita alcohol consumption has not changed much throughout this period, alcohol advertising media expenditures for all alcohol beverages have increased almost 400% since 1971. This study has provided evidence of consumption changes across categories of alcohol beverages over the past 40-plus years with the preponderance of those changes significantly correlated to fluctuations in demography, taxation and income levels – not advertising.

Dr Ekant Veer, Associate Professor of Marketing, School of Business and Economics In all likelihood, even if everyone knew what would guarantee a healthy life, would it really make any difference? There are many things that we know are extremely unhealthy, but still continue in our society: tobacco smokers likely know it is harmful to their health, but they continue to smoke, and binge drinkers probably know they will have a hangover in the morning, but they continue to drink excessively. Knowing something is healthy or unhealthy is only one part of the equation. 

In May 2012, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended against prostate-specific antigen (PSA)–based screening for prostate cancer, giving it a grade D and concluding, “there is moderate certainty that the benefits of PSA-based screening from prostate cancer do not outweigh the harms.”1Rather than put an end to this controversy over screening, this recommendation further fueled a contentious ongoing debate.

We are a visual culture, so strong design and visual storytelling are key creative outlets to enhance content marketing.

In 2013, Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy and publication of her personal treatment choice for BRCA1 positivity generated considerable media attention. To the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first prospective survey conducted among the general public to measure a quantifiable media-related effect on public awareness.

CONCLUSIONS
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first prospective study to demonstrate a statistically significant impact of a celebrity announcement on public awareness regarding breast cancer treatment. The results underscore the importance of a media-related impact for professionals in the health care sector, which can serve as a tipping point for raising awareness and improving knowledge concerning a specific disease among the general public. Cancer 2015. © 2015 American Cancer Society.

A Brookings Institute economics expert and a patient advocate argued with each other last week during a live Google chat. They disagreed about the voices of patients, and how much these voices should count. Their debate is just one of hundreds going on as to how and where and when to register patient feedback in health care. The two of them had spent almost a week in barbed exchanges on Twitter, but were relatively kind to each other at the live chat.

Toronto: Using Twitter can help physicians answer health queries from their patients in a better way, say researchers from University of British Columbia (UBC).
The study found that more and more health care professionals are embracing social media.

This challenges common opinion that physicians are reluctant to jump on the social media bandwagon.
"Many people go online for health information but little research has been done on who is participating in these discussions or what is being shared," said Julie Robillard, neurology professor at UBC's national core for neuroethics.