Health Misinformation in Search and Social Media

Abstract

People regularly use web search and social media to investigate health related issues. This type of Internet data might contain misinformation i.e incorrect information which contradicts current established medical understanding. If people are influenced by the presented misinformation in these sources, they can make harmful decisions about their health. Our research goal is to investigate the affect of Internet data on people's health. Our current findings suggest that people can be potentially harmed by search engine results. Furthermore, we successfully built a high precision approach to track misinformation in social media. In this paper, we briefly discuss our ongoing work results. Thereafter, we propose a research plan to understand possible mechanisms of misinformation's effect on people and possible impacts of these misinformation on public health.