Design and evaluation of a co-produced social media campaign to promote aquatic safety in Queensland national parks.

ABSTRACT: Social media increasingly shapes how visitors engage with aquatic locations in national parks, where risky behaviours contribute to drowning and injury risk. Selfies and photography with mobile phones have been implicated in fatal and non-fatal injury, due to distraction leading to a loss of awareness of a person's surroundings. We partnered with Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) to co-produce and evaluate a targeted Instagram water safety campaign at an injury hotspot, with specific focus on campaign design, audience engagement, message recall, and user perceptions. Campaign development was informed by social media user and influencer interviews, surveys with social media users, frontline ranger observations, and patterns of visitor behaviour on social media. Between January an

SUBMITTER: Cornell S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12574670 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature