title: Measuring interactivity on tobacco control websites.
abstract: With the increased reach of Web 2.0, Internet users expect webpages to be interactive. No studies have been conducted to assess whether tobacco control-relevant sites have implemented these features. The authors conducted an analysis of an international sample of tobacco control-relevant websites to determine their level of interactivity. The sample included 68 unique websites selected from Google searches in 5 countries, on each country's Google site, using the term smoking. The 68 sites were analyzed for 10 categories of interactive tools. The most common type of interactive content found on 46 (68%) of sites was for multimedia featuring content that was not primarily text based, such as photo galleries, videos, or podcasts. Only 11 (16%) websites-outside of media sites-allowed people to interact and engage with the site owners and other users by allowing posting comments on content and/or hosting forums/discussions. Linkages to social networking sites were low: 17 pages (25%) linked to Twitter, 15 (22%) to Facebook, and 11 (16%) to YouTube. Interactivity and connectedness to online social media appears to still be in its infancy among tobacco control-relevant sites.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health , Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. becky.freeman@sydney.edu.au
authors.forename: Becky
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Freeman
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chapman
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D002170:Canada; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D019212:Multimedia; D009520:New Zealand; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D061108:Social Media; D060756:Social Networking; D006113:United Kingdom; D014481:United States; D014584:User-Computer Interface