Is there health out there in the afrosphere? An analysis of health-related content posted by black bloggers.

We explored the extent to which Blacks use online blogs to communicate health information. We content analyzed blogs' main pages for: health-related text, badges, subject lists, and tag clouds. Half of the blogs possessed one of the aforementioned items referencing or depicting health. Violence/crime and health/healthcare were referenced most frequently. We also analyzed health-related posts by coding for presumed posting purpose. We found that bloggers most often posted health content in order to share information; very few promoted healthier behavior. We assert that blogs have the potential to be an important health communication tool for reaching Black Americans.