Health Information In Social Media Research Articles

Evaluation on social media health information communication based on machine learning technology

AbstractSocial media is an important channel for information dissemination in today's society. All kinds of enterprises, political organization, social organizations, etc. release all kinds of information through social media. This article conducted research and analysis on information on social media and effectively managed it. Machine learning methods can effectively solve the problem of analyzing health information (HI) in social media, thereby improving analysis efficiency and accuracy. This article explored the dissemination of social media HI based on machine learning technology, elaborated on the analysis and research of social media HI dissemination, discussed the importance of social media HI for the audience, and analyzed the empowerment of machine learning in HI dissemination. Through analysis and investigation, the new social media HI dissemination has increased by 0.09% compared with the traditional social media HI dissemination pseudoscience information identification; audience involvement has increased by 0.08; audience professionalism has increased by 0.2. Introducing machine learning into the field of HI content dissemination can help achieve customized production and crowdsourcing of content, from concept to reality, and from theory to practice, and thus trigger a new content revolution, shining new youth and vitality into HI dissemination.

Identifying Credible Sources of Health Information in Social Media: Phase 2-Considerations for Non-Accredited Nonprofit Organizations, For-Profit Entities, and Individual Sources.

Identifying Credible Sources of Health Information in Social Media: Phase 2-Considerations for Non-Accredited Nonprofit Organizations, For-Profit Entities, and Individual Sources.

Exploring the topic structure and evolutionary trends of health informatics research in library and information science

PurposeThis study aims to reveal the topic structure and evolutionary trends of health informatics research in library and information science.Design/methodology/approachUsing publications in Web of Science core collection, this study combines informetrics and content analysis to reveal the topic structure and evolutionary trends of health informatics research in library and information science. The analyses are conducted by Pajek, VOSviewer and Gephi.FindingsThe health informatics research in library and information science can be divided into five subcommunities: health information needs and seeking behavior, application of bibliometrics in medicine, health information literacy, health information in social media and electronic health records. Research on health information literacy and health information in social media is the core of research. Most topics had a clear and continuous evolutionary venation. In the future, health information literacy and health information in social media will tend to be the mainstream. There is room for systematic development of research on health information needs and seeking behavior.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the topic structure and evolutionary trends of health informatics research based on the perspective of library and information science. This study helps identify the concerns and contributions of library and information science to health informatics research and provides compelling evidence for researchers to understand the current state of research.

Improving Health Information for Rare Disease Patients and Caregivers: A Survey of Preferences for Health Information Seeking Channels and Formats

ABSTRACT Understanding rare disease patients’ and caregivers’ health information-seeking behavior is essential for creating useful resources. Due to the rarity of the diseases, available information can be scarce and lead to non-traditional, untrustworthy sources. A survey of 136 RASopathies caregivers was conducted via social media. The findings indicate that health information needs pertained to information about specialized medical practitioners and self-care support, while preferred information formats included visual media like images and links to helpful health articles. Caregivers were less interested in physical or print resources related to health and medical conditions when compared to digital resources and social media health information. Parents were more likely to share peer-reviewed or vetted health articles as opposed to media reports and other sources that may be more prone to disseminating fake news or disinformation about rare health conditions. This study has implications both for information professionals and eHealth professionals.

Deciphering Latent Health Information in Social Media Using a Mixed-Methods Design.

Natural language processing techniques have increased the volume and variety of text data that can be analyzed. The aim of this study was to identify the positive and negative topical sentiments among diet, diabetes, exercise, and obesity tweets. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-method design for our analytical framework, we analyzed a data corpus of 1.7 million diet, diabetes, exercise, and obesity (DDEO)-related tweets collected over 12 months. Sentiment analysis and topic modeling were used to analyze the data. The results show that overall, 29% of the tweets were positive, and 17% were negative. Using sentiment analysis and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling, we analyzed 800 positive and negative DDEO topics. From the 800 LDA topics-after the qualitative and computational removal of incoherent topics-473 topics were characterized as coherent. Obesity was the only query health topic with a higher percentage of negative tweets. The use of social media by public health practitioners should focus not only on the dissemination of health information based on the topics discovered but also consider what they can do for the health consumer as a result of the interaction in digital spaces such as social media. Future studies will benefit from using multiclass sentiment analysis methods associated with other novel topic modeling approaches.

COVID-19 Misinformation: A Potent Co-Factor in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID-19, the biggest global health crisis of our times was complicated by an equally potent co-factor: the misinformation infodemic. A confluence of unique factors led to the emergence of the crisis of misinformation, including the widespread reach of social media, the lack of credible sources and strategies for information dissemination, and the sticky and virulent nature of the misinformation campaigns. One of the primary targets of the misinformation campaign was the COVID-19 vaccine effort, leading to significant impediments to implementing an effective and successful vaccination campaign. The time to act is now and will need a concerted multipronged approach with a close partnership between scientists, public health agencies, government agencies, and social media companies to foster accuracy in the exchange of health information in social media and curb the menace of misinformation. This paper aims to review the scope of the problem and examine strategies to help mitigate it.

Unpacking Misinfodemic During a Global Health Crisis: A Qualitative Inquiry of Psychosocial Characteristics in Social Media Interactions.

The pervasiveness of health information in social media has led to a modern misinformation crisis, also known as a misinfodemic. Misinfodemics have upended public health activities as clearly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of this study is to characterize social media content and information sources using theory-driven health behavior and psychology constructs to better understand the motifs of misinformation and their role in the dissemination of health (mis)information in Twitter posts. We analyzed 1,400 randomly selected tweets related to COVID-19 to ascertain four important variables, what is the tweet about (content), how is it structured (linguistic features), who is tweeting (source), and what is the reach of the tweet (dissemination). Results showed there was a significant difference between themes expressed, health beliefs manifested, and observed linguistic patterns in true and false information. Implications for informatics-driven digital health utilities, such as theory-informed knowledge models and context-aware risk communications, are discussed.

Release and Demand of Public Health Information in Social Media During the Outbreak of COVID-19 in China.

Information release is a key to the macro-economy during the outbreak of the Coronavirus Diosease-2019 (COVID-19). To explore the relationship between information supply by the government and public information demand in the pandemic, this study collected over 4,000 posts published on the most popular social media platform, i.e., WeChat. Many approaches, such as text mining, are employed to explore the information at different stages during the pandemic. According to the results, the government attached great importance to the information related to the pandemic. The main topics of information released by the government included the latest situation of the pandemic, announcements by the State Council, and prevention policies for COVID-19. Information mismatch between the public and Chinese governments contributed to the economic depression caused by the pandemic. Specifically, the topics of “the latest situation” and “popular scientific knowledge regarding the pandemic” have gained the most attention of the public. The information demand of the public has changed from the pandemic itself to the recovery of social life and industrial activities after the authority announced the control of the pandemic. However, during the recession phase, the information demand has shifted to asymptomatic infections and global pandemic trends. By contrast, some of the main topics provided by the government, such as “How beautiful you are,” were excessive because the public demand is insufficient. Therefore, severe mismatches existed between information release of the government and public information demand during the pandemic, which impeded the recovery of the economy. The results in this study provide strategical suggestions of information release and opinion guidance for the authorities.

Saudi Diabetic Patients’ Beliefs and Experiences with Health Related Information from Social Media

Introduction: Social media and acceptance of the information related to health is becoming acceptable to an extent for the public. The use of social media is rapidly growing and it is being used both by healthcare professionals and patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of social networking applications for experience and behaviour towards health information among diabetic patients.
 Materials and Methods: The present study was a cross sectional study, conducted in spring of 2020 (April to May). The distribution of the survey questionnaire was done online through various social media platforms with a convenience sample of people with diabetes (n=569), Eligibility criteria were aged 18 and above, Saudis with diagnosis of diabetes and willing to give consent were included in the study. Exclusion criteria were less than 18 years old and non-Saudis and non-diabetic.
 Results: Analysis of online survey data indicated that WhatsApp (89.1%) was the most commonly used social network followed by Snapchat (66.3%), Instagram (40.6%), Twitter (35%), Telegram (19.5%), Tiktok (12.5%) and Facebook (10%). About 25 (4.4%) participants strongly agreed that health information from social media impact life positively. More than half 290(51%) participants agreed to apply information only from the trusted websites. Near about half 275(48.3%) disagreed that social media could invent treatment for diabetes more than believing in health institution and medicinal industries. Nearly one-fourth 141(24.8%) of participants agreed that all health information from social media is right. Almost 264 (46.4%) said that they sometimes face health information in social media. Nearly 265(46.6%) patients mentioned that they never applied themselves any information claiming treating diabetes.
 Conclusion: This study shows the effect of social media on diabetic patients and various responses of diabetic patients in regard of their beliefs and experience towards health information from social media. Most of the respondents agreed that they apply information obtained from social network and the same could lead to some deleterious effects on health.

Identifying Credible Sources of Health Information in Social Media: Principles and Attributes.

Identifying Credible Sources of Health Information in Social Media: Principles and Attributes.

Social media in health communication: A literature review of information quality.

Social media is used in health communication by individuals, health professionals, disease centres and other health regulatory bodies. However, varying degrees of information quality are churned out daily on social media. This review is concerned with the quality of Social Media Health Information (SMHI). The review sought to understand how SMHI quality issues have been framed and addressed in the literature. Health topics, users and social media platforms that have raised health information quality concerns are reviewed. The review also looked at the suitability of existing criteria and instruments used in evaluating SMHI and identified gaps for future research. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and the forward chaining strategy were used in the document search. Data were sourced according to inclusion criteria from five academic databases, namely Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PubMed and MEDLINE. A total of 93 articles published between 2000 and 2019 were used in the review. The review revealed a worrying trend of health content and communication on social media, especially of cancer, dental care and diabetes information on YouTube. The review further discovered that the Journal of the American Medical Association, the DISCERN and the Health on the Net Foundation, which were designed before the advent of social media, continue to be used as quality evaluation instruments for SMHI, even though technical and user characteristics of social media differ from traditional portals such as websites. The study synthesises varied opinions on SMHI quality in the literature and recommends that future research proposes quality evaluation criteria and instruments specifically for SMHI.

A Study of User Profile and Their Attitudes About Social Media Promotion of Prescription Drugs in Eastern India

Social Media Promotion (SMP) of prescription drugs can be both helpful, as it provides us emotional support, it helps marginalized group of patients to reach out their physician. But sometimes it might turn into lethal as it can motivate patients for self-medication, it can negatively impact patient physician relationship. Thus, SMP for prescription drugs is a topic that should be considered critically to study, as the interests of patients is involved. Present study analyzes the impact of social media promotion of prescription medicine among patients of Eastern India. To understand the impact a cross-section study was carried out and a survey was done. Cronbach's α was done to check reliability of collected data and, ANCOVA was used to determine if there is significant differences in responses. The study shows that number of female students, who are using social media to search the health information in social media, higher than male students in most of cases. From the study it is also found that social media promotion of prescription drugs leads to self-medication and patients are also using it to get emotional support. Respondents reported that patients are using social media platform to get health information, their attitude does not get affected by the users‟ geographical area irrespective of their gender.

Social Media and Online Surgical Education: A Content Analysis and Descriptive Study on Quality of Vascular Surgery Information Available on YouTube®

Objective: There is a growing trend towards social media health information and education. The objective of this study was to assess the quality of YouTube® videos as a form of health education for core vascular conditions. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on YouTube® videos focusing on six core vascular conditions: abdominal aortic aneurysm, carotid artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, lower limb amputation, varicose veins, and deep vein thrombosis. One hundred videos for each vascular condition were recorded by a single clinician rater. Videos were coded in terms of country, year and source of upload. Other parameters included category, target audience, and viewer interaction. Video quality was evaluated using three validated assessment tools: DISCERN, HONcode, and Global Quality Scale (GQS). Results: Six hundred videos were reviewed within their vascular condition. Varicose vein and amputation videos were the most popular conditions receiving the highest mean number of views (286 233 and 167 651 respectively). Physician/Healthcare professionals (PHs) were the source of the majority of YouTube® videos: 68% of AAA videos and 72% of carotid videos. Videos targeting students achieved the highest level of viewer interaction. PH videos achieved the highest mean GQS score across all six vascular conditions (p < .001). Civilian uploaded videos were found to have the highest level of bias and a mean GQS score of 2 indicating “poor” quality information. Conclusion: Physicians and healthcare professionals should consider increasing their engagement and upload more high quality videos to YouTube® in order to counteract the “misleading” and “poor quality” patient information that currently exists.

Fake vs. real health information in social media in China

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study is to examine the features of fake health information in social media in China and to develop a list of the features of fake information that can be used as a tool to help users identify fake health information in social media. The study collects 428 pieces of health information from WeChat, a dominant social media in China. Then the information is categorized into real or fake health information based on the judgment of rumor websites and health experts. Open coding is performed based on a framework that helps identify low quality information online. Chi‐square tests are adopted to identify significant features of fake information. The results indicate that gender and occupation affect users' dissemination of fake health information. Based on the analysis, the study develops a list that includes the salient features of fake health information. This list can help users to identify fake health information and improve their health literacy. In addition, it can inform health information systems to automatically filter fake information and improve health information quality online.

Optimizing the Presentation of Mental Health Information in Social Media: The Effects of Health Testimonials and Platform on Source Perceptions, Message Processing, and Health Outcomes

ABSTRACTUsing social media for the purpose of disseminating mental health information is a critical area of scientific inquiry for health communication professionals. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the presence of a first-person testimonial in educational mental health information placed in Facebook and Twitter messages influenced college students’ (N = 257) source perceptions, information processing, cognitive elaboration, health information recall, beliefs, and behavioral intentions. Results show that exposure to social media messages that featured mental health information embedded with a testimonial predicted less source homophily and more critical thoughts about the social media source, less systematic message processing, and less cognitive elaboration. Health information recall was significantly impacted by both the social media platform and message content such that participants in the testimonial condition on Facebook were more likely to recall the health facts in those messages whereas participants who viewed the testimonial in Twitter were less likely to recall the facts in those tweets. Compared to those who read Facebook messages, participants who read Twitter messages reported higher levels of systematic message processing. These findings suggest that the integration of health testimonials into social media messages might inadvertently provoke psychological resistance to mental health information, thereby reducing the persuasive impact of those messages.