Making decisions about health information on social media: a mouse-tracking study.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Lowry M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9306418 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Making decisions about health information on social media: a mouse-tracking study.
Lowry Mark M Trivedi Neha N Boyd Patrick P Julian Anne A Treviño Melissa M Lama Yuki Y Heley Kathryn K Perna Frank F
Cognitive research: principles and implications 20220722 1
Health misinformation is a problem on social media, and more understanding is needed about how users cognitively process it. In this study, participants' accuracy in determining whether 60 health claims were true (e.g., "Vaccines prevent disease outbreaks") or false (e.g., "Vaccines cause disease outbreaks") was assessed. The 60 claims were related to three domains of health risk behavior (i.e., smoking, alcohol and vaccines). Claims were presented as Tweets or as simple text statements. We empl ...[more]
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Project description:BackgroundHealth-related misinformation can be propagated via social media and is a threat to public health. Several quality assessment tools and principles to evaluate health-related information in the public domain exist; however, these were not designed specifically for social media.ObjectiveThis study aims to develop Principles for Health-related Information on Social Media (PRHISM), which can be used to evaluate the quality of health-related social media content.MethodsA modified Delphi approach was used to obtain expert consensus on the principles and functions of PRHISM. Health and social media experts were recruited via Twitter, email, and snowballing. A total of 3 surveys were administered between February 2021 and May 2021. The first survey was informed by a literature review and included open-ended questions and items from existing quality assessment tools. Subsequent surveys were informed by the results of the proceeding survey. Consensus was deemed if ≥80% agreement was reached, and items with consensus were considered relevant to include in PRHISM. After the third survey, principles were finalized, and an instruction manual and scoring tool for PRHISM were developed and circulated to expert participants for final feedback.ResultsA total of 34 experts consented to participate, of whom 18 (53%) responded to all 3 Delphi surveys. In total, 13 principles were considered relevant and were included in PRHISM. When the instructions and PRHISM scoring tool were circulated, no objections to the wording of the final principles were received.ConclusionsA total of 13 quality principles were included in the PRHISM tool, along with a scoring system and implementation tool. The principles promote accessibility, transparency, provision of authoritative and evidence-based information and support for consumers' relationships with health care providers. PRHISM can be used to evaluate the quality of health-related information provided on social media. These principles may also be useful to content creators for developing high-quality health-related social media content and assist consumers in discerning high- and low-quality information.
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Project description:ObjectivesPresent an artificial intelligence-enabled pipeline for estimating the prevalence of depression and general anxiety among pregnant women using texts from their social media posts. Use said pipeline to analyze mental health trends on subreddits frequented by pregnant women and report on interesting insights that could be helpful for policy-makers, clinicians, etc.Materials and methodsWe used pretrained transformer-based models to build a natural language processing pipeline that can automatically detect depressed pregnant women on social media and carry out topic modeling to detect their concerns.ResultsWe detected depressed posts by pregnant women on Reddit and validated the performance of the depression classification model by carrying out topic modeling to reveal that depressive topics were detected. The proportion of potentially depressed surprisingly reduced during the pandemic (2020 and 2021). Queries related to antidepressants, such as Zoloft, and potential ways of managing mental health dominated discourse before the pandemic (2018 and 2019), whereas queries about pelvic pain and associated stress dominated the discourse during the pandemic.Discussion and conclusionSupportive online communities could be a factor in alleviating stress related to the pandemic, hence the reduction in the proportion of depressed users during the pandemic. Stress during the pandemic has been associated with pelvic pain among pregnant women, and this trend is confirmed through topic modeling of depressive posts during the pandemic.
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Project description:BackgroundEmpirical research has demonstrated that people frequently use social media for gathering and sharing online health information. Health literacy, social media use, and self-efficacy are important factors that may influence people's health behaviors online.ObjectiveWe aimed to examine the associations between health literacy, health-related social media use, self-efficacy, and health behavioral intentions online.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey of adults 18 years and older (n=449) to examine predictors of health-related behavioral intentions online including health literacy, social media use, and self-efficacy in China using 2 moderated mediation models. Mediation and moderation analyses were conducted.ResultsSelf-efficacy mediated the effects of health literacy (Bindirect=0.213, 95% CI 0.101 to 0.339) and social media use (Bindirect=0.023, 95% CI 0.008 to 0.045) on health behavioral intentions on social media. Age moderated the effects of health literacy on self-efficacy (P=.03), while previous experience moderated the effects of social media use on self-efficacy (P<.001).ConclusionsHealth literacy and health-related social media use influenced health behavioral intentions on social media via their prior effects on self-efficacy. The association between health literacy and self-efficacy was stronger among younger respondents, whereas the association between health-related social media use and self-efficacy was stronger among those who previously had positive experiences with health information on social media. Health practitioners should target self-efficacy among older populations and increase positive media experience related to health.
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