BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Health Communications and Behavior Change
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1564584
This article is part of the Research TopicA One Health Approach to Infection Prevention and Antimicrobial ResistanceView all 3 articles
Examining the use of different message categories to communicate AMR: A content analysis of Instagram posts
Provisionally accepted
- 1University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- 2Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
- 3University of Galway, Galway, County Galway, Ireland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background/Objectives: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major worldwide concern with severe implications for public health, contributing to almost 5 million deaths in 2019. One of the main causes of AMR is overuse and misuse of antibiotics, which can be addressed by increasing awareness and educating the public. Studies have demonstrated the potential of social media to educate the public and influence behaviour. Instagram's unique features, such as its visual nature and user-friendly interface, make it well-suited for exploring health behaviours and disseminating information on various health topics. Research shows 65.4% of young adults (18-36 years old) use Instagram as their main source of information. Methods: This study examined AMR posts from Instagram from January 1, 2017 to July 15, 2023. In total, 4,606 images and videos were initially extracted which corresponded to 3,261 Instagram posts. After data cleaning, a final dataset of 574 posts were categorised into 6 message categories which were humour, shock/disgust/fear, personal stories/statements, educational/informative, opportunistic and advocacy. Results: The most common post category was educational/informative (78%) and humour was the least common (2%). We also looked at the average engagement (likes) with these posts, the educational/informative category received the most likes per post (mean of 30). Fear/shock/disgust category received 25 likes per post, humour and personal stories/statements 18 and 21 respectively. Conclusions: Our study shows Instagram has hardly been used for AMR interventions. An important population group of young adults who use Instagram as their main source of information, is missed in public health messaging on AMR.
Keywords: AMR, Public health communication, Social Media, public health messaging, public health campaigns, Social Marketing
Received: 21 Jan 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Parveen, Chang, McHugh and Vellinga. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sana Parveen, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.