The role of social media in promoting women’s health education in Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Social media has the potential to improve women's health in developing countries through health education and promotion. In the Arab world, women's health interventions are lacking. However, with a high penetration rate of social media in the Arab world, there is good opportunity to utilize social media platforms such as Twitter to promote women's health. In this paper, we analyze the Tweet feeds of Saudi-based Twitter account to promote women's health. A total of 5167 Tweets were extracted and analyzed retrospectively, using NVivo Ncapture between June 2014 and March 2015. There were a total number of 3449 followers by March 20, 2015. Results showed that a majority of the Twitter followers (61%, n=2104) were seeking gynecological information, followed by pregnancy related information (27%, n=931), breast-feeding advice (9%, n=310), and other health related information (3%, n=103). Results also showed an increased level of health awareness and comprehension among Twitter followers. Further research is needed to promote women's health in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world through social media platforms such as Twitter and similar platforms including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube which are also popular in the Arab world.
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Various social media outlets can raise the degree of health promotion and awareness across multiple health topics.
“The included research showed that various social media outlets could raise the degree of women's health promotion [25], awareness of menstrual hygiene, understanding of breast cancer awareness [26], breastfeeding techniques [27]”
From Social Media Role and Its Impact on Public Health: A Narrative Review (2023) · cites this paper as [25]
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Social Media Role and Its Impact on Public Health: A Narrative Review
Kanchan, S., & Gaidhane, A. (2023) · Cureus · doi:10.7759/cureus.33737 · Cited by 221 · see citing works
“The included research showed that various social media outlets could raise the degree of women's health promotion [25], awareness of menstrual hygiene, understanding of breast cancer awareness [26], breastfeeding techniques [27], and adherence, self-perception and promotion of oral health [28,29], significant use of a…”
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“Another study that investigated the effect of Twitter on women’s health education demonstrated that women in Saudi Arabia were interested in discussing gynecological complains and breastfeeding-related issues on Twitter [9].”
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“Previous reports demonstrated that Saudis use SM to search for health information [22] with available resources in Arabic about medication [23] women’s health issues [24], breastfeeding [25] and oral health [26].”
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“Awareness campaigns on Twitter have been reported for women's health [24] and breast cancer [23] before and urologists should make use of Twitter to better promote men's health awareness campaigns such as the most popular Movember campaign [25].”
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“%) were the most commonly used social media platforms, consistent with similar findings in previous literature [16-19], such as the studies by Bahkali et al. [16] and Alsuraihi et al. [17], found that Twitter, Facebook, and short message services were the most popular social media platforms among…”
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“Research in Saudi Arabia has recommended using social media to impart better health education to the population, particularly among females [30].”
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“This was shown by a study performed on women’s health in Saudi Arabia [13].”
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“Health promotion offers opportunities for both individuals and communities to obtain essential information skills needed to change health behaviors and make healthy decisions [1].”
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“NCapture is a commonly used tool in social sciences for collecting data from X and other types of social media (Bahkali et al., 2015; Dolan et al., 2019; Hays & Daker-White, 2015; Hbeilini & Dmello, 2025; PettyJohn et al., 2019).”
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Educational Services and Women’s Education: Saudi Arabia
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(2024) · Mağallaẗ Kulliyyaẗ Al-Adāb Ǧāmiʿaẗ Qanat Al-Swīs · doi:10.21608/jfask.2024.334550
الاحتياجات والإشباعات التي يقدمها يوتيوب لمدوني الفيديو العربPreprint
Atef, N. (2024) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/un2bh
- Authors
- Salwa, B., Ahmad, A., Ahlam, B., Sara, A., Mowafa, H., & Khaled, A.
- Venue
- Studies in health technology and informatics
- Publisher
- IOS Press
- Published
- 2015
- Volume
- 213
- Pages
- 259-62
- ISSN
- 0926-9630 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2395944696
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 2 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 13.99
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Studies in health technology and informatics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Keywords
- social media, women's health, health education, Twitter, Saudi Arabia, pregnancy information, breastfeeding recommendations, health awareness, health promotion, Arab world
- MeSH terms
- Consumer Health Informatics, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Awareness, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Female, Health Education, Health Promotion, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Pregnancy, Saudi Arabia, Women's Health, Arabs, Young Adult, Health Literacy, Social Media
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