Fake news, influencers and health-related professional participation on the Web: A pilot study on a social-network of people with Multiple Sclerosis
Fake news, influencers and health-related professional participation on the Web: A pilot study on a social-network of people with Multiple Sclerosis
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DOI：
10.1016/j.msard.2018.07.046
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发表时间：
2018-10-01
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Bonavita, S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lavorgna, L.;De Stefano, M.;Bonavita, S.
背景：在过去的几十年里，越来越多的患者在互联网上搜索健康信息。这方面的信息寻求是重要的，特别是对受慢性病影响的人，需要终身治疗和管理。这些人通常对这种疾病非常了解，但仍然容易受到治愈或拯救的希望的影响，通常被错误的信息，神话，传说和治疗方法放大，这些方法并不总是经过科学验证。许多研究表明，有些人更喜欢依靠互联网作为他们的主要信息来源，往往阻碍了医患关系。一个专业的方法是必要的，以保持保密性，诚实，并在医疗专业的信任。目的：我们的目的是检查，在一个医疗监督的意大利网络社区，（SMsocialsocialotk.com）专门针对患有多发性硬化症（MSMS）的人，由用户共享的帖子，并通过在线问卷验证由被确定为影响者的用户共享的帖子内容的可靠性。我们将2015年4月至6月在SMsocialnetwork上发布的帖子分为医疗内容（科学正确或假新闻）和与社交互动相关的帖子。后来，我们向社区发放了一份问卷，要求确定为MS日常生活提供最可靠建议的三个用户/影响者以及提供MS治疗最有用信息的三个用户/影响者。结果：308个帖子报告了科学和相关的医疗信息，而72个帖子包含假新闻。1420个职位是普遍感兴趣的。6位影响者中有4位只写了正确的医疗信息（3位是神经科医生，1位是神经科医生），从未写过任何假新闻。其余2名指定的影响者（2名非官方影响者）只写了关于一般利益的帖子。结论：对假新闻及其作者的识别表明，后者从未被指定为影响者。SMsocialnetwork.com是一个“网络安全环境”，在这里，影响者只分享正确的医疗信息，从不发布假新闻。我们推测，神经学家和心理学家监督信息流的存在可能有助于降低假新闻传播的风险，并避免其获得权威意义。
Background: Over the last few decades, patients have increasingly been searching for health information on the Internet. This aspect of information seeking is important, especially for people affected by chronic pathologies and require lifelong treatment and management. These people are usually very well informed about the disease but are nonetheless vulnerable to hopes of being cured or saved, often amplified by misinformation, myths, legends, and therapies that are not always scientifically proven. Many studies suggest that some individuals prefer to rely on the Internet as their main source of information, often hindering the patient-doctor relationship. A professional approach is imperative to maintain confidentiality, honesty, and trust in the medical profession.Objective: we aimed to examine, in a medically supervised Italian web community (SMsocialnetwotk.com ) dedicated to people with Multiple Sclerosis (pwMS), the posts shared by users and to verify the reliability of contents of posts shared by users pinpointed as Influencers through an online questionnaire.Methods: we grouped the posts published on SMsocialnetwork from April to June 2015 into those with medical content (scientifically correct or fake news), and those related to social interactions. Later, we gave a questionnaire to the community asking to identify the three users/Influencers providing the most reliable advice for everyday life with MS and the three users/Influencers providing the most useful information about MS treatments.Results: 308 posts reported scientific and relevant medical information, whereas 72 posts included pieces of fake news. 1420 posts were of general interest. Four out of the 6 Influencers had written only posts with correct medical information (3 were pwMS, 1 was a Neurologist) and never any fake news. The remaining 2 appointed Influencers (2 pwMS) had written only posts about general interests.Conclusion: the identification of fake news and their authors has shown that the latter are never appointed as Influencers. SMsocialnetwork.com acted as a "web safe environment" where the Influencers contributed by sharing only correct medical information and never fake news. We speculate that the presence of neurologists and psychologists supervising the information flow might have contributed to reduce the risk of fake news spreading and to avoid their acquisition of authoritative meaning.