While hospitals’ health promotion via social media has the potential to be a critical source of health information, research shows racial and ethnic disparities exist in health-related knowledge that may be, in part, related to media representation. The purpose of this study is to examine the racial and ethnic representation of people featured in Washington, D.C. hospitals’ social media platforms to understand how hospitals embed cultural competency into their health communication. By comparing the diversity of images on hospitals’ social media platforms with the demographics of hospitals’ neighboring communities, the researchers intend to highlight opportunities to improve targeted health messaging to underserved communities, particularly Black and Hispanic communities. By analyzing the images and videos posted on the three most popular social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – for a one-month period, the researchers found that Whites and Asians were over-represented while Hispanics were severely under-represented in hospitals’ social media representation as compared to the community demographics. Increasing the diversity of minority representation on hospitals’ social media-based health promotion may contribute to addressing the social disparities in healthcare.

尽管通过社交媒体促进医院的健康可能成为健康信息的重要来源，但研究表明，与健康相关的知识中存在种族和种族差异，这些知识可能部分与媒体代表有关。这项研究的目的是研究华盛顿特区医院社交媒体平台上人们的种族和族裔代表，以了解医院如何将文化能力融入其健康交流中。通过将医院社交媒体平台上图像的多样性与医院邻近社区的人口统计数据进行比较，研究人员打算着重指出机会，以改善针对服务不足的社区（尤其是黑人和西班牙裔社区）的针对性卫生信息。通过分析在三个最受欢迎的社交媒体平台（Facebook，Twitter和YouTube）上发布的图像和视频长达一个月的时间，研究人员发现，白人和亚洲人的比例过高，而西班牙裔在医院中的比例严重不足与社区受众特征相比的社交媒体代表。少数族裔在医院基于社交媒体的健康促进中的代表人数的增加可能有助于解决医疗保健方面的社会差距。