Key result
Targeted emotional messaging boosts AFib community engagement, with fear driving protection and love driving affiliation.
Why the study?
Do specific communication elements (emotions, topics, appeal, linguistic style) improve patient awareness and engagement in an online atrial fibrillation community?
RCT (n=795,812)
randomized
Do specific communication elements (emotions, topics, appeal, linguistic style) improve patient awareness and engagement in an online atrial fibrillation community?
Tailoring communication elements such as emotion and topic can significantly enhance patient awareness and engagement in online health communities for atrial fibrillation.
Online health communities (OHCs) offer opportunities to improve personalized health treatment by facilitating collaboration between patients and health professionals and leveraging patient-reported outcome and experience measures (PROMS and PREMS). This study investigates how communication elements (i.e., emotions, patient-generated topics, appeal, and linguistic style) affect patient awareness and engagement in an OHC in the field of atrial fibrillation (AF) aiming to provide empirical insights into communication strategies that enhance patient involvement and expand OHC impact. Our randomized online field experiment targeted Dutch adults using 12 communication concepts shared across Facebook, Instagram of an OHC platform on AF. Participants' response and interaction with communication concepts were analyzed to investigate the influence of communication elements on awareness, defined as Click-Through-Rate (CTR), and engagement marked as average engagement time and community subscriptions. Statistical analysis incorporated linear and logistic regression models, with Python 3.10.12 Statsmodels and SPSS 29.0. Between May 23 and June 23, 2023, 795,812 users were reached, leading to 18,426 OHC visits, 478 new subscriptions, and an average engagement time of 35 seconds. Communication concepts significantly affected CTR, average engagement time, and community subscriptions, with both emotion and topic being strong predictors. Our study finds that the impact of emotions in health communication varies by topic: fear is most effective with self-protection, while love works best with affiliation and kin care. Expert appeals boost awareness, whereas testimonials enhance engagement. Our novel findings contribute to the field of digital health communication by shedding light on the dynamic influence of communication elements on different stages of the patient journey. Health managers can use these insights to better reach and engage patients in online health communities to accelerate health care impact.
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Kuipers et al. (2025) conducted an RCT in atrial fibrillation (n=795,812). 12 communication concepts (varying by emotion, topic, appeal, linguistic style) vs. Other communication concepts was evaluated on Awareness (Click-Through-Rate) and engagement (average engagement time and community subscriptions). Communication concepts significantly affected awareness and engagement in an online atrial fibrillation community, with fear most effective for self-protection and love for affiliation.
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