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Use of social media in food safety in Saudi Arabia-a preliminary study.

ABSTRACT: Over the past two decades, the rapid rise of social media has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information online. Social media platforms are not now only used extensively by individuals but also by businesses, governmental agencies, educational institutions, and many other organizations to deliver information to the public and, in return, collect information from that same audience. The preliminary study presented here offers valuable insights into how social media may be used to improve food safety standards. Today, food safety is still a major health challenge in the country, which occasionally faces unsafe food supply chains, an increased number of food borne outbreaks, and poor hygiene education. Social media may be used as a very valuable tool for people to access important information and more knowledge about food safety. The limited-scope survey presented here was conducted over the western part of Saudi Arabia and included 295 individuals of both genders, among various age groups. Participants responded to an online questionnaire about their use of social media to obtain information about food safety. Results showed that social media was indeed a major outlet for individuals to access information on food safety, with the top-ranked social media platforms being WhatsApp (M = 2.99) followed by Snapchat (M = 3.72), YouTube (M = 4.08), Instagram (M = 4.46), and Facebook (M = 4.81). Additionally, we found that the most trusted sources of information was the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (72.6%) and the Saudi Ministry of Health (55.4%). Participants most frequently sought epidemiological information (52.5%), quantitative risk estimates (23.1%), and information on the various types of foodborne infections (15.3%); they preferred the information to be in video format (67.5%), articles (57.6%), infographics (55.3%). Trustworthiness clearly emerged from the survey as an important consideration for individuals when accessing food safety information on social media.

SUBMITTER: Abdulsalam NM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8116190 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Social media platforms play a vital role in the dissemination of health information. However, evidence suggests that a high proportion of Twitter posts (ie, tweets) are not necessarily accurate, and many studies suggest that tweets do not need to be accurate, or at least evidence based, to receive traction. This is a dangerous combination in the sphere of health information. OBJECTIVE:The first objective of this study is to examine health-related tweets originating from Saudi Arabia in terms of their accuracy. The second objective is to find factors that relate to the accuracy and dissemination of these tweets, thereby enabling the identification of ways to enhance the dissemination of accurate tweets. The initial findings from this study and methodological improvements will then be employed in a larger-scale study that will address these issues in more detail. METHODS:A health lexicon was used to extract health-related tweets using the Twitter application programming interface and the results were further filtered manually. A total of 300 tweets were each labeled by two medical doctors; the doctors agreed that 109 tweets were either accurate or inaccurate. Other measures were taken from these tweets' metadata to see if there was any relationship between the measures and either the accuracy or the dissemination of the tweets. The entire range of this metadata was analyzed using Python, version 3.6.5 (Python Software Foundation), to answer the research questions posed. RESULTS:A total of 34 out of 109 tweets (31.2%) in the dataset used in this study were classified as untrustworthy health information. These came mainly from users with a non-health care background and social media accounts that had no corresponding physical (ie, organization) manifestation. Unsurprisingly, we found that traditionally trusted health sources were more likely to tweet accurate health information than other users. Likewise, these provisional results suggest that tweets posted in the morning are more trustworthy than tweets posted at night, possibly corresponding to official and casual posts, respectively. Our results also suggest that the crowd was quite good at identifying trustworthy information sources, as evidenced by the number of times a tweet's author was tagged as favorited by the community. CONCLUSIONS:The results indicate some initially surprising factors that might correlate with the accuracy of tweets and their dissemination. For example, the time a tweet was posted correlated with its accuracy, which may reflect a difference between professional (ie, morning) and hobbyist (ie, evening) tweets. More surprisingly, tweets containing a kashida-a decorative element in Arabic writing used to justify the text within lines-were more likely to be disseminated through retweets. These findings will be further assessed using data analysis techniques on a much larger dataset in future work.

Project description:Food marketing influences eating preferences and choices, especially among adolescents, contributing to the rise of overweight, obesity, and other chronic health disorders. Recent social media advancements have provided food marketers with platforms to reach out to many in more personal and authentic ways as compared to classical media advertising. Such personalized and borderless social media platforms allow marketers to easily use owned, paid, and earned (word-of -mouth) marketing strategies, including paid and non-paid influencers to reach younger target audiences. This study therefore aims to explore food messages adolescents (12-18 years old) encounter on social media, and assess these messages for their sources, the presence of core and non-core food, and the marketing strategies employed. To attain an in-depth understanding of the food messages that adolescents are continuously exposed to, we carried out a diary study with 21 Flemish adolescents who took screenshots of food images they encountered on their social media platforms for the duration of one week. A quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 611 images revealed that adolescents are mostly exposed to messages of non-core (67% of images) and branded (49% of images) food, often (49% of images) presented in association with a social context such as hanging around with friends, eating at restaurants and celebrating with food. Adolescents often encounter branded food images through peers and social media influencers, the majority of which are part of earned (49% of branded images) or paid (40% of branded images) media food marketing. This research provides an in-depth understanding of the social media messages that adolescents encounter on a daily basis and sheds light on food norms typically communicated on social media by marketers, peers, and influencers. Study findings highlight prominent social media food messages that should be tested for their persuasiveness, providing insights for future research that aims to assess the effects of social media food marketing on adolescents. Based on the study findings, we call for relevant policy actions that address current social media marketing strategies targeted at adolescents.

Project description:IntroductionSodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors moderately reduce glucose levels in type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Some cases of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) were reported with SGLT2 inhibitors. However, data on the long-term safety of dapagliflozin in Saudi Arabia are lacking. The present study aimed to monitor the safety of dapagliflozin in patients with T2DM and evaluate the change in HbA1c during the observation period compared to baseline.MethodsThis was a local, prospective, single-arm, non-interventional, regulatory post-marketing study. The study was conducted in Saudi Arabia from May 2017 to September 2019. Patients received either 5 or 10 mg dapagliflozin in conjunction with diet and exercise modifications to treat T2DM. The occurrence of adverse events was observed over the treatment duration and for 3 days after administering the last dose of dapagliflozin.ResultsA total of 527 patients were recruited in the study, 524 of which were eligible for the statistical analysis. About 62% were males. The median (IQR) age was 52.3 (14.8) years, while the median (IQR) body mass index was 31.6 (7.7) kg/m2. The median (IQR) duration since the patients were first diagnosed with T2DM was 8.78 (6.73) years. The most common comorbidities were hyperlipidemia (51.1%) and hypertension (41.1%). Almost three-quarters of the study population (73.7%) received other antidiabetic medications in addition to dapagliflozin. Over a period of 12 months, a total of 106 adverse events were experienced by 65 (12.33%) patients. Vulvovaginal pruritus (3.1%), dysuria (2.7%), polyuria (1.3%), urinary tract infections (1%), fatigue (0.8%), and hypoglycemia (0.8%) were among the reported adverse events. One case of DKA (0.2%) was reported. The mean (SD) HbA1c% level significantly decreased from 8.6 (1.6) % at baseline to reach 7.2 (1.2) % after 12 months of treatment (p < 0.0001).ConclusionDapagliflozin was found to be a well tolerated and effective treatment option for T2DM patients in Saudi Arabia. Vulvovaginal pruritus and dysuria were the most common adverse events.

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Use of social media in food safety in Saudi Arabia-a preliminary study.

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