Immigrant Families' Health-Related Information Behavior on Instant Messaging Platforms: Health-related Information Exchange in Immigrant Family Groups on Instant Messaging Platforms

For immigrant families, instant messaging family groups are a common platform for sharing and discussing health-related information. Immigrants often maintain contact with their family abroad and trust information in shared IM family groups more than the information from local authorities and sources. In this study, we aimed to understand health-related information behaviors of immigrant families in their IM family groups. Based on the interviews with 6 participants from immigrant families to Canada, we found that immigrant families’ discourse on IM platforms is motivated by love and care for other family members. The families used local and international sources of information, judged information credibility by its alignment with their pre-existing knowledge, and mostly did not verify information further. The information shared by different users from different sources often contradicted one another. Yet, family members did not discuss the conflicting information due to their desire to avoid tensions.