Measuring Passive Engagement with Health Information on Social Media

Little to no consensus exists on the definition of “engagement” on social media platforms. A myriad of management tools are available to measure behavioral interactions with social media. However, the majority of social media users engage with the content passively, without taking action such as liking or commenting on it. To gain an understanding of how passive engagement with social media is evaluated, this paper examines recent articles on why and how passive engagement is evaluated. Furthermore, we review some recent research proposing new methods for measuring this type of engagement. Most of this research typically evaluates passive engagement in relation to users' drivers and business outcomes. We then present our theoretical model for passive user engagement with health content on social media. Finally, we outline our plans for the next steps in our research and propose methods that will be used to evaluate the model.