Research Article: #Putkids1st: Health Professionals Using Social Media for Public Policy Advocacy—From Collective Action to Connective Action
Abstract:
This study examines public policy advocacy by pediatricians and other health professionals in the hashtag community: #putkids1st. The study explores 4321 tweets that feature the hashtag, generated by 1231 unique users largely drawn from the American Association of Pediatricians and its members. The data are used to explore the structural dynamics of the hashtag community, the role of homophily, and to test a source-message framework to predict and recommendations to help improve engagement and retransmission of professional health advocacy messages.
Introduction:
At least 250 million children worldwide were not able to reach their full physical or psychological development in 2016 [1]. In 2019, up to 1 billion were affected by abuse or neglect [1]. Ensuring children’s rights to survival, health, education, and protection has been a central component of international human rights treaties for over a century from the establishment of the League in Nations in 1924 to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, the most widely ratified UN human rights…
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