| The area of opinion leadership is a concept found in a number of health promotion models, theories, and frameworks (Valente & Pumpuang, 2007), and it has received a substantial amount of empirical and theoretical attention by social scientists over the last 20 years (Valente & Davis, 1999). Most empirical research in this area has found that opinion leaders can be used to gain support for and implement health promotion programs in local communities (Valente & Pumpuang, 2007). With the advent of the Internet, individuals from all walks of life can have access to more information, access it more quickly, and have it curated through the online channels they trust. As more and more interactions take place online, interest in how opinion leaders have migrated online is increasing among a number of interdisciplinary researchers, including those within the communication discipline (Bodendorf & Kaiser, 2009; Dubois & Gaffney, 2014; Kavanaugh et al., 2006; Nisbet & Kotcher, 2009; Song, Chi, Hino & Tseng, 2007). Yet, empirical research into the roles these online layperson opinion leaders play in health promotion remains scarce (Sundar, Edwards, Hu & Stavrositu, 2007). While relatively little research has looked at how online opinion leaders can impact health promotion initiatives, preliminary research suggests that they have a similar ability to traditional opinion leaders to support and influence health promotion and behavior change programs (Burke-Garcia et al., 2017; Burke-Garcia et al., 2018; Kaye, 2005; Lin & Huang, 2006; Porter et al., 2007; Terilli & Arnorsdottir, 2008).;This dissertation consisted of two aims and associated goals. The first was to establish an understanding of bloggers' perceptions of themselves as opinion leaders for their readers and the relationship between key variables that may influence this. To achieve this aim, multiple perspectives were gathered via in-depth interviews with a variety of bloggers to provide a holistic view of this topic using the bloggers' feedback. As well, to build on this foundation, and supplement the themes that emerged from the qualitative interviews, patterns and associations between key variables in this study were gathered via a survey instrument and analyzed. The goals of Aim 2 were to explore bloggers' willingness to write about health topics including the dissemination of relevant, accurate, and timely health information, motivations for doing so, the barriers that exist to sharing this kind of information, differences amongst racial/ethnic groups, and associations between key variables that may influence these things. Finally, this aim sought to understand bloggers' perceptions of health messages, tease out the variable of fatalism that may influence health message preference, and explore conceptualizations of fatalism amongst this group including differences amongst demographic groups. Similar to Aim 1, the goals of Aim 2 were achieved through the use of both interviews and quantitative insights gleaned from the survey data. 24 bloggers participated in the interviews and 449 eligible participants completed the survey.;Results included that bloggers overwhelming consider themselves to be opinion leaders for their readers and are willing to disseminate relevant, accurate, and timely health information to their audiences. Further, findings included that tie strength is positively associated with both opinion leadership and willingness to communicate about health, but interestingly, not having written about health in the past was associated with greater opinion leadership and greater willingness to communicate about health. Supporting these findings, key themes that emerged from the interviews included how changes in the blogging industry are changing the content and focus of blogs as well as the relationships between bloggers and their readers; the interplay between health as a blog topic and bloggers' credibility; how bloggers have strong conceptualizations of risk when it comes to talking about health; how this sample does not have strong conceptualizations of fatalism; and finally, how they preferred prevention-oriented health messages over risk-oriented ones or both message types together.;This dissertation highlighted similar and unique perspectives within blogging culture on the topics of opinion leadership and willingness to communicate about health. It also uncovered multiple theoretical, methodological, and translational insights that can be applied to the study of health communication and information dissemination more broadly. |
