How Instagram and Twitter Celebrities helps creating diabetes awareness

among middle-aged working professionals of the UK

Research Analysis Part
Words: 3000
Reference: Harvard

Results and Discussion_1500

Before going into the details, it is important to understand the history behind the
celebrity culture and how they became so influential among the general public. The
human civilisation's progress fast paced during the 20th century and rapid
technological advancements during the mid 20th century paved a new era through the
advancement in the audio-visual technology. As the audio-visual technology improved
it created a whole new world of silver screen and lime light as this technology helped
with the development of film industries worldwide such as Hollywood, Bollywood,
Chinawood and others (Bohas, 2016). Now, the development of these film industries
has developed the whole new concept of celebrities. During this period the general
public not only liked to watch movies and listen to the plays on radio, they fell in love
with the actors and actresses playing those roles (Elliott, 2018). This is how the
celebrity culture we know developed and was in its early stage. Furthermore, as
technology advanced televisions became more affordable for the public and once
people started to see their favourite actors and actresses on television, it only
enhanced this celebrity culture some more.
Now with the beginning of the 21st century technology was growing faster than ever
and the usage of the Internet was rising around the world as the internet spread from
developed nations to developing and underdeveloped nations as well. This rapid
development of the internet technology opened new doors and one of them is the
Social Networking Platform. As websites like MySpace, Hi5, Facebook started to grow
as millions of people started to join them and used it for news sharing and
communication it became more evident for the celebrities to join this platform and
communicate with their fans (Hoffman et al. 2017). Currently, other than Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter are the world's largest social media platforms. Instagram and
Twitter became the go to medium for the celebrities because of their theme, while
Twitter offered micro-blogging facility to communicate by sharing updates, Instagram
is about sharing photographs. Celebrities loved it as their fans found Instagram and
Twitter to be the most effective social media site to follow them, communicate with
them and receive updates from them.
Advertisement and marketing through celebrities are not a new approach and their
impact on brand value enhancement is well known. But soon health and wellbeing
organisations and departments around the world realised such influencing factors can
be utilised to drive health awareness campaigns as well (Aziz, 2017). As a result
nonprofit fundraising and wellbeing awareness groups started to endorse celebrities
because if they can influence consumers and improve sales, they can be equally
influential to drive awareness about diseases as well. This new approach not only
seemed to be right but it proved to be a right approach as these campaigns were
serving their purpose and positively impacting the general public (Rath et al. 2018).
As a result, celebrity stars such as Angelina Jolie, Emma Watson, Kristen Bell are
helping with the driving of such awareness programs through their social media posts.
Success of their social media campaigns can be analysed through their monetary
value much easier and as stars like Emma Watson, Kristen Bell has helped to raise
more than $30 million through their social media based posting (Hughes, 2016).

Celebrity quotes being used in social media based awareness

(Source: Twitter, 2018)

Furthermore, non-profit organisations are not only featuring celebrities to drive such
awareness programs and conduct fundraisers but businesses are following the same
path to conduct their corporate social responsibilities as well. DexCom Inc., a diabetes
diagnosis system manufacturing company conducted such awareness campaigns
during 2017. They launched a social media campaign named "Call of the Warrior" to
support the people who are living with diabetes. DexCom used various celebrities such
as Derek Theler, Jordan Morris, Eric Paslay, Ryan Reed and Kris Freeman among
others. They decided to feature these celebrities because some of these celebrities
were diagnosed with diabetes such as Derek Theler, who has been battling diabetes
since the age of three and yet leading the life of a celebrity (Business Wire, 2017).
Diabetes awareness campaigns from such celebrities are more effective and impactful
because they are the victim of this disease and which as a result enhances the
acceptability of them while playing such a role through social media posts.
Famous Hollywood actor and celebrity Tom Hanks was also diagnosed with Type 2
diabetes and the actor also shared this news with his fan base through Twitter as well.
Ever since the revealing of this fact, Tom Hanks is actively working with health
organisations to drive the awareness programs through both social media and in the
real world as well (Celebrity Angels, 2016). He is known to be using social media posts
to inform the masses about the preventive measurements and mitigatory
measurements can be undertaken such as regular exercising, healthy diets.

Celebrity using Instagram to share their daily routine of diabetes management

(Source: Instagram, 2019)

Well known singer and songwriter Drew Harrisberg is also diagnosed with diabetes as
well. Drew Harrisberg has dedicated himself for the diabetes awareness programs so
much that he has dedicated his Instagram account for solely this purpose and also
actively working with non-profit organisations. Drew stated that social media websites
can be toxic because they can be used for hours to waste time but he also states that
it can be rewarding also and can be used to make impact. This is why Drew Harrisberg
said that he has decided to use these platforms to drive diabetes awareness among
his followers and has dedicated his Instagram account for this purpose rather than
waiting for endorsements (Xu, 2019). According to Drew, he has experimented with
various lifestyles over the years in order to find the best lifestyle and which he
communicates through his Instagram account to benefit others with his first hand
experience with diabetes.

Celebrity sharing their struggle stories through Instagram post

(Source: Instagram, 2018)

Famous singer Nick Jonas is also active with diabetes awareness through social
media platforms such as Instagram and also shared their struggle stories through
Instagram posts as well. Such posts sharing the struggle of the celebrities are not just
helping them to communicate with their fans but such posts have much larger
significance as they are demonstrating the fight their favourite celebrities put on to fight
such disease. Which as a result not only drives awareness among the public but also
helps people who are already diagnosed with the disease and powers them
psychologically. Through his Instagram posts Nick Jonas follows such measures and
his activity to drive diabetes awareness is not only limited to social media activity but
he has also co-founded an organisation named Beyond Type 1 to fight diabetes as
well (Koenig, 2018). With his social media posts and this organisation's celebrity figure
Nick Jonas is continuously trying to help the masses to fight this chronic disease.
A study by Hoffman et al. (2017) suggests that the celebrity based driving of health
related knowledge is very impactful among the masses. This is because celebrities
are one of the influential people as people tend to follow and emulate their decisions
and behaviours. This as a result enables them to be prominent social figures and over
time has enabled them to become medical advisors as they were being used to
endorse health awareness and communicate health related knowledge. There
influential factor as a result is benefiting non-profit organisations and governments to
drive such awareness programs for critical diseases such as diabetes, HIV or Cancer.
Over the years as a result researchers have found that celebrity health choices on TV,
Movies or on social media can have a significant influential role on the masses (Aziz,
2017). Therefore, celebrities are not only being used in the diabetes awareness but
on cancer awareness as well. Angelina Jolie, who is diagnosed with breast cancer is
playing an influential role in the cancer awareness programs worldwide and also
through her social media based activities. Furthermore, other celebrities such as
Prince Harry and Rihanna is also driving awareness through social media activities for
HIV Aids and in a viral social media video first posted by Prince Harry shows he is
being HIV tested just to be sure and drived a lot of general public to do follow the same
path as well (Aziz, 2017).
Bret Michaels is another famous singer and ever since his collapse on live stage due
to diabetes he has actively worked through social media and real world activities to
raise funds for American Diabetes Association. Through his activities he has managed
to acquire $2,50,000 from his followers to fund ADA and playing an influential role in
the global celebrity activities against the prevalence of diabetes (Howard, 2017).
Findings from these discussions demonstrates that celebrities are playing an
influential and pivotal role to not only drive awareness about diabetes but they are
playing a crucial role to benefit the victims of this critical disease as well.

Conclusion_750
Overall, the literature reviews and secondary analysis to develop an understanding for
the impact of celebrities through social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter
were helpful. As put together they have demonstrated a vast positiveness through
these discussions conducted by the researcher of this paper. Diabetes is globally a
critical health issue or disease and the prevalence of this disease suggests the
importance of awareness and preventive measure is crucial. The criticality of this
disease is so huge that WHO has a seperate program to drive the awareness,
preventive measure and treatment plan. This is why globally almost every government
of every country has ensured that their health department or ministry is actively
working against this disease. This is because diabetes as a disease instigates various
other health complexities such as obesity, heart disease, eye sight issues and so many
other health issues. These issues as a result harms the well being of the public and
impacts the country's general health and wellbeing. Therefore, over the years
governments, non-profit organisations, and for-profit organisations pursuing their CSR
have developed various planning to drive the diabetes awareness programs through
various media or channels (White et al. 2018). Such channels are television, radio,
leaflets and others. Though, those approaches or means were hit and miss as they
did not ensure that the target public bases were being reached and it was harder for
them to evaluate the effectiveness of such measurements as well.
But, ever since the rise of the Internet a new brew websites were starting to pop up in
the fairly new developed concept of the digital world. These new websites are now
known as social media platforms and they are now part of our daily lives. Businesses
have proven that social media platforms can be an effective medium to influence
consumers, choice and their purchasing decisions. For such they have used celebrity
endorsements to drive their marketing campaigns and which have benefited them as
social media based marketing campaigns are more effective as they are more direct
as consumers can participate in those campaigns as a matter of fact.
Looking at this success, public health and wellbeing organisations such as
government health departments and non-profit organisations followed the same path
in order to capitalise on this same psychological influence factor as well. Therefore,
they started to use social media platforms such as Twitter to disseminate their health
related communications among the masses. As their evaluation of such measures
suggested the positive influence of among the public they soon decided to improvise
and started to incorporate celebrities within their awareness campaigns taking place
through social media (Abedin et al. 2017). Thus, they started to involve famous
celebrity figures to convey their messages as well as celebrities suffering critical
diseases such as diabetes to share their lifestyle, struggles. This approach has proven
to be working as they are not only enhancing the awareness about diabetes among
masses but they are also motivating diabetes diagnosed people to actively fight
against these diseases as well.
Findings from the secondary analysis of this paper demonstrated various famous
celebrities to be actively working with other organisations or solely working against the
diabetes and driving an impactful awareness program. Furthermore, gathered
knowledge also suggests that celebrity approach is not limited to awareness but they
are also using social media posts to aware their followers about the importance of
funding of such organisations and generating valuable funding through online
donations from their followers as well. Some of the celebrities such as Nick Jonas,
Drew Harrisberg, who are fighting the diabetes have also inaugurated their own
diabetes awareness organisations and actively working against the prevalence of this
disease. Furthermore, various scholarly articles investigating the impact and influence
of the celebrities driving diabetes awareness through social media platforms were
referred to and supports the findings of the researcher of this paper as well. Findings
of these scholarly research articles demonstrates the influential nature of social media
based celebrity approach towards health and wellbeing awareness.
Nevertheless, gathered knowledge and findings suggests that there is still a vast room
for improvements as the majority of the celebrities seem to shying away from such
initiatives but they are only required to post awareness through their Instagram and
Twitter accounts. As such initiatives from more famous celebrities will help to drive
such social media based diabetes and other critical health issue related awareness
campaigns and spark a widespread awareness and will benefit the masses.

Recommendations_550
Based on the gathered knowledge from the various sources of information the
following recommendations are being made in order to enhance the impact of diabetes
awareness:
● Involvement of more mainstream celebrities: Although, the gathered
knowledge suggests that well known and famous celebrities are working on
such diabetes awareness programs through social media websites such as
Twitter and Instagram. There is still a huge room for improvements as even
though mainstream celebrities such as Tom Hanks, Halle Berry or Nick Jonas
are actively driving social media based awareness, more mainstream
celebrities can involve themselves into such awareness programs. As they are
not required to pursue tasks other than communicating through social media
posts, it is an effortless task anybody can conduct. As a result, involvement
from other celebrities will enhance the outreach of these awareness programs
and will help with the driving of these programs.
● Participation of celebrities in charity and fundraiser events: Knowledge
gathered from the literature reviews and from the secondary analysis suggests
that celebrity activity is not limited to just posting awareness messages but they
also participates in the charity and fundraisers. Celebrities such as Derek
Theler and Nick Jonas are among such celebrities who help with the funding as
they influence the masses to contribute towards this cause. However, even
though there are hundreds of celebrities who actively drive diabetes awareness
through social media, the number of celebrities participating or driving charity
and fundraisers are significantly low as very few of them are known to be
helping financially. Thus, it is recommended that celebrities should also
participate and pursue their followers to contribute to such funds as well.
● Facilitation of trending activities to reach the non-followers:

Recommendations for future study_200

Reference
Rath, J.M., Greenberg, M., Ganz, O., Pitzer, L., Hair, E.C., Xiao, H., Cantrell, J. and
Vallone, D., 2018. A multidisciplinary approach to health campaign effectiveness.
Journal of public health research, 7(2).
Hughes, B. (2016). How Social Media Celebrity Campaigns Can Drive Nonprofit
Success. [online] Social Media Week. Available at:
https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2016/10/social-media-celebrity-campaigns-can-
drive-nonprofit-success/ [Accessed 5 Feb. 2020].
Business Wire (2017). DexCom Launches “Call of the Warrior” Campaign for National
Diabetes Awareness Month. [online] Businesswire.com. Available at:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005491/en/DexCom-Launches-
%E2%80%9CCall-Warrior%E2%80%9D-Campaign-National-Diabetes [Accessed 5
Feb. 2020].
Twitter (2018). Encourage those with diabetes to make healthy choices.
#AmericanDiabetesMonth #MotivationMonday #HalleBerry. [online] Twitter.com.
Available at: https://twitter.com/NextLevelIL/status/1067115918415855616 [Accessed
5 Feb. 2020].
Celebrity Angels (2016). Tom Hanks Helps Raise Diabetes Awareness -
celebrityangels.co.uk. [online] celebrityangels.co.uk. Available at:
http://www.celebrityangels.co.uk/article/tom_hanks_helps_raise_diabetes_awarenes
s [Accessed 5 Feb. 2020].
Instagram (2019). DREW HARRISBERG on Instagram: “DAILY LIVING - The third
pillar of my five-pillar approach to thriving with diabetes. I always make sure to get a
daily dose of THE SIX…”. [online] Instagram. Available at:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0De69ZhEln/?utm_source=ig_embed [Accessed 5
Feb. 2020].
u, J. (2019). 'I went from a healthy athletic guy to wasting away'. [online]
bodyandsoulau. Available at: https://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/health/i-went-from-a-
healthy-athletic-guy-to-wasting-away/news-
story/4202a4c919ee2fcaa30c6267c83cecf7 [Accessed 5 Feb. 2020].
Instagram (2019). Nick Jonas on Instagram: “13 years ago today I was diagnosed with
type 1 diabetes. The picture on the left is me a few weeks after my diagnosis. Barely
100 pounds…”. [online] Instagram. Available at:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqRT9rYl1Zt/?utm_source=ig_embed [Accessed 5
Feb. 2020].
Koenig, R. (2018). Nick Jonas describes life with Type 1 diabetes, Priyanka shows
support. [online] TODAY.com. Available at: https://www.today.com/health/nick-jonas-
opens-about-life-type-1-diabetes-priyanka-chopra-t142618 [Accessed 5 Feb. 2020].
Aziz, Z. (2017). How celebrities influence your everyday health. [online] Bbc.com.
Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170224-how-celebrities-influence-
your-everyday-health [Accessed 5 Feb. 2020].
Hoffman, S.J., Mansoor, Y., Natt, N., Sritharan, L., Belluz, J., Caulfield, T., Freedhoff,
Y., Lavis, J.N. and Sharma, A.M., 2017. Celebrities’ impact on health-related
knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and status outcomes: protocol for a systematic
review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression analysis. Systematic reviews, 6(1), p.13.
Elliott, A. ed., 2018. Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies. Routledge.
Bohas, A., 2016. The Rise of Entertainment Economy: A Disneyisation of Hollywood.
In The Political Economy of Disney (pp. 61-99). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Howard, J. (2017). The hidden role celebrities play in public health. [online] CNN.
Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/18/health/celebrity-health-charlie-sheen-
study/index.html [Accessed 5 Feb. 2020].
White, K., Gebremariam, A., Lewis, D., Nordgren, W., Wedding, J., Pasek, J., Garrity,
A., Hirschfeld, E. and Lee, J.M., 2018. Motivations for participation in an online social
media community for diabetes. Journal of diabetes science and technology, 12(3),
pp.712-718.
Abedin, T., Al Mamun, M., Lasker, M.A., Ahmed, S.W., Shommu, N., Rumana, N. and
Turin, T.C., 2017. Social media as a platform for information about diabetes foot care:
a study of Facebook groups. Canadian journal of diabetes, 41(1), pp.97-101.