Abstract

Social listening has emerged as a powerful tool for bridging the gap between public health messaging and the diverse needs of communities. Its focus, however, has primarily centered on monitoring social media platforms for public health communication and managing infodemics, thereby neglecting a considerable segment of the population, especially in low- and middle-income countries, with no internet access. Within low- and middle-income countries, established social and cultural norms and financial constraints contribute to gender disparities in both access and social acceptance of educational attainment and mobile phone use by women. Our research explores the influence of gender and socio-economic status on engagement with social media and its use as an information source. We use two case studies involving urban and rural settings in India. In the first case study, the surveyed sample in the urban setting comprised 1565 men and 1133 women employed in the call center industry across five cities in India. In the second case study, a total of 723 men and 748 women were surveyed in the rural Karnataka region in India. Our key findings indicate that women tend to use social media platforms less frequently than men for accessing news, and their economic status and caste shape their reliance on social media for essential health information. These findings underscore the necessity to integrate both online and offline data sources in social listening and health communication efforts, in order to mitigate the digital divide within communities.