Citation

Cohen EL, Hoffner C. Comput. Hum. Behav. 2016; 65: 643-650.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.042

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Celebrity health events can have a positive effect on public health education and awareness, in part because people spread health information related to the celebrity on social network sites. This may be particularly true in the event of celebrity deaths or other tragedies, when social network sites provide a convenient, public space to connect with others to mourn. However, little is understood about the circumstances that encourage health information sharing following these events. Using a Mechanical Turk sample (N = 281), this study employed a questionnaire to examine the role of parasocial attachment to Robin Williams and experienced grief following his suicide in explaining health information sharing on social network sites (i.e., sharing information about clinical depression, suicide prevention, substance abuse treatment, and Parkinson's disease). Grief mediated the effect of parasocial attachment on health information sharing, but a moderated mediation analysis revealed that grief motivated health education on social network sites only for individuals who were coping by trying to find positive meaning in his death. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd

Language: en

Keywords

Coping; Health; Public health; Mourning; Information analysis; Celebrity; Social networking (online); Information dissemination; Health communication; Parasocial; Social network site; Social Network Sites