WIP 144 - Drowning Prevention Education on Instagram: A Content Analysis

Poster Number: WIP 144
Publication Number: WIP 144.711

Background: Social media provides the public with a virtual space to discuss, disseminate, and consume information about any topic, including healthcare related information. Instagram is one of the largest free social media platforms that allows sharing of content in photo or short videos (called reels).
While there may be advantages of using social media to disseminate education on the prevention of child injuries such as drowning, there are little to no regulations on health information shared. Serious concerns remain about the reliability and accuracy of the health educational content as well as content’s creators.

Objective: To gain a preliminary understanding of how drowning prevention education is portrayed using Instagram reels. To characterize the availability, source and content of the information, and to discern the accuracy and reliability.

Design/Methods: IRB approval was not required. We created a new Instagram page to avoid algorithm bias from a previously establised page. We developed a codebook of questions to extract and record emerging themes and data. Choosing 5 hashtags related to drowning prevention, 400 videos will be systematically selected and analyzed using our inclusion and exclusion criteria. Duplicate videos will be removed. We are collecting 20 reels from 1 hashtag per weekday and will repeat this weekly for 4 weeks. 2 reviewers will enter information about each video as detailed by our codebook. 10% of the total videos will be coded by both coders to ensure inter-rater reliability.
Outcome variables such as the creator type, comments, caption, educational method used, reliability of creator, will be coded and results will be analyzed.

Authors are currently extracting these reels. The results of our study are expected to describe the messages and engagement relating to these reels. Results will hopefully show the reliability, or a lack of reliability, of the information currently available to the public and reveal the possible need for a greater presence of experts on social media to combat misinformation relating to the field of injury prevention.