This study examined how major health organizations use Twitter for disseminating health information, building relationships, and encouraging actions to improve health. The sampled organizations were the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and American Diabetes Association. A content analysis was conducted on 1,583 tweets to examine these organizations' use of Twitter's interactive features and to understand the message functions and topics of their tweets. The numbers of retweets and favorites were also measured as engagement indicators and compared by different message functions. The results revealed that all of the organizations posted original tweets most, but they differed in the degree to which they used the retweet and reply functions. Hashtags and hyperlinks were the most frequently used interactive tools. The majority of the tweets were about organization-related topics, whereas personal health-related tweets represented a relatively small portion of the sample. Followers were most likely to like and retweet personal health action-based messages.

The purpose of this study was to propose an integrative model of activism that explains why and how individuals in the networked society are engaged in contentious issues. Incorporating the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS), hostile media perception, affective injustice, and social media efficacy, this study examined how the integrative model of activism predicts social media activism and offline activism on three issues of gun ownership, immigration, and police use of power. The integrative model of activism provides a valuable standpoint to understand activist publics and serves as a springboard for further scholarly discussion on activism and conflict resolution.

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PurposeThis study aims to examine the effects of transformational leadership on employees' internal (i.e. voice) and external (i.e. megaphoning) communication behaviors and to explore the mediating role of employees' communal and exchange relationship norms with their organization.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was conducted with full-time employees working in various industry sectors in the USA.FindingsTransformational leadership significantly increased employees' voice behaviors and their positive and negative megaphoning behaviors. Communal relationship norms exerted a significant mediation effect on employees' communicative behaviors and exchange relationship norms had positive impacts on employees' megaphoning behaviors.Originality/valueThis study is among the first attempts to test the effect of transformational leadership style on employees' communicative actions within and outside of a company and the mediating role of exchange-communal relationship norms.