title: Is there health out there in the afrosphere? An analysis of health-related content posted by black bloggers.
abstract: We explored the extent to which Blacks use online blogs to communicate health information. We content analyzed blogs' main pages for: health-related text, badges, subject lists, and tag clouds. Half of the blogs possessed one of the aforementioned items referencing or depicting health. Violence/crime and health/healthcare were referenced most frequently. We also analyzed health-related posts by coding for presumed posting purpose. We found that bloggers most often posted health content in order to share information; very few promoted healthier behavior. We assert that blogs have the potential to be an important health communication tool for reaching Black Americans.
authors: Department of Communication, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA. LJDell01@louisville.edu
authors: Lindsay J
authors: LJ
authors: Della
authors: Dawn B
authors: DB
authors: Griffin
authors: Dogan
authors: D
authors: Eroğlu
authors: Jay M
authors: JM
authors: Bernhardt
authors: Rebecca R
authors: RR
authors: Wells
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015706:Bibliometrics; D057218:Blogging / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D005260:Female; D058015:Health Communication / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult