Abstract
Patients have ever-increasing access to web-based news about hopeful scientific developments that may or may not cure them in the future. Science communication experts agree that the quality of news provision is not always guaranteed. However, literature does not clarify in what way users are actually affected by typical news characteristics such as the news object (described developmental phase of an innovation), the news source (degree of authority), and the news style (degree of language intensification). An online vignette experiment (N = 259) investigated causal relationships between characteristics of news about diabetes innovations and patients’ perceptions of future success, their interest in the innovation, and attitudes regarding current therapy adherence. Findings show that descriptions of success in mice led to higher estimations of future success chances than earlier and later developmental phases. Furthermore, news from a nonauthoritative source led to an increased interest in the innovation, and a more negative attitude towards current lifestyle advice. Lastly, the intensification of the language used in news messages showed slight adverse effects on the readers’ attitude. These findings, combined with their small effect sizes, support the optimistic view that diabetes patients are generally critical assessors of health news and that future research on this topic should focus on affected fragile subgroups.
Highlights
A study on perceptions of health news messages showed that these were mostly affected by objective risk characteristics; language intensification only affected readers’ perceptions of the severity of a health risk [30]. These findings suggest that readers of health news have the ability to correct for language intensification and see the objective part of the information
To measure news effects on these outcomes, we present fictional innovations in short messages that are systematically manipulated on three news dimensions; object, source, and style, that is: (a) the developmental phase of a particular innovation; (b) the type of authority of the source on the innovation news message; and (c) the degree of language intensification by intext presence of strong words to emphasize the innovative research results
A small but significant effect that was Effects of diabetes news on patients established is an increase of the intention to adhere to medication after reading news from an authoritative source. This effect is may yet be of importance, given the large and greatly varied diabetes population that encounters an ever increasing amount of online health news
Summary
Human participants were involved in an online vignette experiment. Prior to start of the actual digital survey, patients were informed about the aims and burden of the study and consent was given by a click to accept principle. Diabetes patients for the present online vignette study were recruited both on social media and in pharmacies. With the approval of the website owners or moderators, a recruitment text with a request to participate in an online questionnaire about Diabetes News and Reader’s Mood was posted together with the survey link. 25 Dutch pharmacies agreed to contribute to our research by handing out flyers containing a recruitment text and a weblink to customers treated for diabetes mellitus type 1 or 2.
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