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Introduction

Social media platforms have grown rapidly in the past few years, making them a convenient and accessible channel to communicate and engage with the general public (Misra & Such, 2016). The use of social media has expanded to a myriad of domains, including healthcare (Mariano et al., 2018), with evidence of positive effects in sharing and discussing health knowledge between clinicians and patients (Kamel Boulos et al., 2016). Hospitals using social media have reported better communication and engagement with patients as well as increased profitability and improved reputation (Griffis et al., 2014; Klassen et al., 2018; Martinez-Millana et al., 2017; Ramkumar et al., 2018).

Today, nearly 91% of adults use social media (Fan & Gordon, 2014) for many purposes, including seeking health information (Van de Belt et al., 2012). This increasing usage, across demographics, has raised the importance of care quality perceptions using social media through better understanding patient experiences and improved engagement (Rozenblum et al., 2017). Many patients use social media as an empowerment tool for psychological and subjective wellbeing, and social support for illness and self-management and care (Hanson et al., 2014; Smailhodzic et al., 2016). Moreover, social media can help catalyze and extend the reach of public health campaigns due to its perverseness and feasibility (Gough et al., 2017) in spreading health advice, events, and information (Hart et al., 2016). Recent evidence suggests that health behaviors can be changed and influenced by social media like weight control and healthy lifestyle adoption (An et al., 2017; Laranjo et al., 2015; Maher et al., 2015). The use of social media through sharing patient experiences, communicating health tips, and sharing the latest scientific research findings has made a positive impact on interventions for chronic diseases such as diabetes (Alanzi, 2018; Gabarron et al., 2018) and cancer (Attai et al., 2015; Pope et al., 2019; Xu et al., 2016).

Over the last few decades, the population has increased in the Arab region to approximately 360 million by mid-2015 and could be reaching 400 million by now (Hillman & Baydoun, 2018). Social media usage in the Arab region continues to grow rapidly, influencing governments' practices, societies, and economies to interact effectively (Salem, 2017). The oil-rich State of Kuwait, an Arab nation, continues to rank among the top countries in the use of social media. In the State of Kuwait alone, approximately 360 thousand users were reported to use the platform, and this number continues to rise (Salem, 2017). This study focuses on Kuwait as a case study.

Instagram, a popular social media platform developed in 2010, is one of the most popular applications growing rapidly with more than 1 billion monthly users (Al Nashmi, 2018; Kang & Wei, 2019; Kim & Kim, 2018; Lee et al., 2015). Due to Instagram’s ability to reach many users from diverse backgrounds (Kamel Boulos et al., 2016), it can be utilized to enhance health education, raise awareness, and expand public health outreach (Gauthier & Spence, 2015; Hindman et al., 2017). Today, Instagram is also used by many health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to spread important public health messages that educate and benefit the general public, and for risk communication during public health crises and disasters (Kamel Boulos et al., 2016).