Yonaira
Rivera

Yonaira Rivera’s scholarship focuses on reducing health inequities and improving the well-being of Latinx and underserved communities through health communication initiatives. Her work uses qualitatively-driven, mixed methods and community-based participatory research to study social media health misinformation, cancer control and prevention, and disaster relief. She conducts research in English and Spanish.

Addressing health inequities and improving the health of underserved populations have always been at the forefront of Yonaira’s work. Her research explores the role of social media as a health communication tool that educates and empowers Latinx audiences. Rivera focuses on effective, theory-driven health communication to understand how engagement with health (mis)information on social media can impact health decisions, as well as how social media can be used to communicate with and mobilize communities before, during and after disasters.

Rivera’s line of work in cancer control and prevention explores how Latinxs engage with and act upon cancer (mis)information they encounter on social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, WhatsApp). Her research suggests that cultural values and other cultural connectors (e.g., language and country of origin) play a salient role in how message factors and source factors influence engagement with cancer (mis)information among Latinxs, as well as in how they assess the credibility of such (mis)information and choose to act upon it. She developed the social media content and context (SoCo) elicitation method as mixed methods approach to surpass the constraints of assessing engagement with health information by only using social media metrics such as likes, comments, or shares. This approach allows for a better representation of how individuals engage with health (mis)information in reality, and how these interactions influence health behaviors.

As a native Puerto Rican, Rivera is committed to the long-term recovery of Puerto Rican communities affected by Hurricane María. She co-founded Puerto Rico Stands and has worked alongside local community leaders to provided them transferable skills and tools to build on their strengths and empower them to create a more resilient community. Her research agenda furthers this work by exploring the role social media platforms play in coordinating and facilitating disaster relief communication efforts.