Browsing by Subject "credibility"
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Item “Fitstagram”: Investigating Fitness-Related Instagram Use and Physical Activity Participation Among Emerging Adults(2024-02) Grace, StephanieMany emerging adults use (aged 18 to 29) social media and cite them as primary sources of health-related information, including physical activity (PA) information. Instagram is among the most popular social media sites, and fitness-related content on Instagram is commonly researched, particularly regarding negative well-being outcomes associated with its use. However, PA promotion professionals are turning to Instagram (and other sites) to create innovative strategies that reach larger, more diverse populations. Yet, there is a limited understanding of emerging adults’ behavior and experiences regarding fitness-related Instagram use, and little work that investigates these topics among samples diverse in gender and racialized/ethnicized identities. This dissertation uses mixed-methodologies to (1) gain a more comprehensive understanding of young people’s fitness-related Instagram use and how it relates to their PA participation and (2) investigate the role of relevant psychosocial and behavioral factors in the relationship between fitness-related Instagram use and PA participation among a diverse sample of emerging adults. This dissertation includes three study manuscripts in Chapters 4, 5, and 6. Participants (N=247) completed a cross-sectional survey regarding their demographic information, fitness-related Instagram use, PA participation, PA information seeking behavior, and exercise self-schema. Chapter 4 discusses descriptive characteristics of participants’ fitness-related Instagram use and explores differences by gender and racialized/ethnicized identities. Chapter 5 examines the relationship between fitness-related Instagram use and PA, including the roles of PA information seeking and exercise self-schema. Chapter 6 reports findings from focus groups with 17 emerging adults who access fitness-related Instagram content daily, specifically related to their use practices and perceptions of content and its influence on their PA behavior. Overall, this dissertation uses a mixed-method approach to yield a more comprehensive understanding of fitness-related Instagram use among a diverse sample of young people so practical suggestions can be made to strengthen PA promotion programs and be mindful of cultural factors. Further, this dissertation provides insight into how emerging adults experience fitness-related Instagram content and mitigate potential harm that can occur while accessing it.Item A Rhetorical Perspective on Trust in E-Health Websites(2015-07) Bakke, AbigailThis dissertation is centered on the issue of trust in e-health, a product of the internet opening access to information at a broad scale. Medicine, as a discipline whose authority has traditionally been based upon expertise and hierarchy between physician and patient, is one domain in which this increased access has led to special concern. My study intervenes in ongoing discussions about e-health information by asking "How does trust operate in e-health sites?" �and does so from a rhetorical perspective. Through a comparative rhetorical analysis of three e-health sites that represent a continuum of informational to interactive, I found that trust operates in e-health sites in ways one might expect such as the use of credibility features to construct an expert ethos, but trust also operates socially in newer ways that are based upon community and personal experience, aligning with the broad shift to Web 2.0. This study has implications for the field of rhetoric and technical communication, in that it poses trust as a viable framework for understanding online information rhetorically and views e-patients as citizen technical communicators. This study also has implications for the design of trustworthy e-health communication.Item Young Women and Online Health Information: A Study of Credibility, Access, and Usability(2015-03) Kinlin, SamanthaSeeking health information online is a common practice in society today, especially among young people and women. Due to the increasing prevalence of this practice, I have reviewed current research on issues of credibility and access in online women’s health information to establish how credibility is conveyed online, and how improving access to online resources could decrease the number of barriers between individuals and health information in general (particularly for those individuals who might not have ready access to health care providers). I then selected a list of current health information websites designed for women and analyzed them according to well-known usability guidelines to determine how well these websites are designed for their audience and which design aspects could improve perceived credibility of or increase access to these sources of information.