Exploring #HealthLiteracy on LinkedIn: a first look at health hashtag engagement in a professional social media context

LinkedIn, despite its large and professionally credentialed user base, remains an underexplored platform for digital health communication, unlike X (formerly Twitter), which has been widely studied for health-related hashtag trends. Health literacy, a key determinant of public health, is increasingly promoted through social media hashtags such as #HealthLiteracy. However, to date, no studies have systematically examined how this hashtag is used on LinkedIn. This study aimed to analyze the use of #HealthLiteracy on LinkedIn, identify thematic patterns in post content, and evaluate user engagement trends, with comparisons to prior X-based research. A one-week retrospective dataset of #HealthLiteracy posts was collected using the SingleFile browser extension. The content was cleaned and analyzed using RStudio with standard text mining packages. Word frequencies, co-occurring hashtags, and engagement metrics (likes, comments, reposts) were extracted, and a chi-square goodness-of-fit test was performed to assess engagement distribution. A total of 370 posts with 3,174 engagements were analyzed. The most frequent co-occurring hashtags included #agedcare, #residentialagedcare, and #healthquality, indicating a focus on institutional eldercare. The most common words, care, aged, solutions, and transition reinforced this thematic alignment. Engagement was primarily passive, with reactions far outnumbering comments and reposts. This study establishes a proof-of-concept for LinkedIn-based hashtag analysis in health research. LinkedIn demonstrates strong potential for targeted dissemination of health literacy content to professionals and policymakers, although engagement strategies may need to be tailored to the platform's predominantly passive interaction culture.