‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research

Maggio, Lauren A.; Krakow, Melinda; Moorhead, Laura

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039692

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…All participants mentioned exposure to misleading health information on social media even when they were not actively using it. Distrust in social media as a source of health information was exhibited through descriptions of “algorithmic bias,” “persuasive intent,” and “financial motives,” which in turn created “polarization” and “echo chambers.” These social phenomena were also linked to cognitive heuristics applied by individuals to (1) ensure credibility of information sources through the “reputation” heuristic and (2) limit misinformation exposure through the “self-confirmation” heuristic, and they are aligned with existing literature [ 42 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Lessons Learned From Interdisciplinary Efforts to Combat COVID-19 Misinformation: Development of Agile Integrative Methods From Behavioral Science, Data Science, and Implementation Science

Myneni¹,

Cuccaro²,

Montogomery³

et al. 2023

JMIR Infodemiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Despite increasing awareness about and advances in addressing social media misinformation, the free flow of false COVID-19 information has continued, affecting individuals’ preventive behaviors, including masking, testing, and vaccine uptake. Objective In this paper, we describe our multidisciplinary efforts with a specific focus on methods to (1) gather community needs, (2) develop interventions, and (3) conduct large-scale agile and rapid community assessments to examine and combat COVID-19 misinformation. Methods We used the Intervention Mapping framework to perform community needs assessment and develop theory-informed interventions. To supplement these rapid and responsive efforts through large-scale online social listening, we developed a novel methodological framework, comprising qualitative inquiry, computational methods, and quantitative network models to analyze publicly available social media data sets to model content-specific misinformation dynamics and guide content tailoring efforts. As part of community needs assessment, we conducted 11 semistructured interviews, 4 listening sessions, and 3 focus groups with community scientists. Further, we used our data repository with 416,927 COVID-19 social media posts to gather information diffusion patterns through digital channels. Results Our results from community needs assessment revealed the complex intertwining of personal, cultural, and social influences of misinformation on individual behaviors and engagement. Our social media interventions resulted in limited community engagement and indicated the need for consumer advocacy and influencer recruitment. The linking of theoretical constructs underlying health behaviors to COVID-19–related social media interactions through semantic and syntactic features using our computational models has revealed frequent interaction typologies in factual and misleading COVID-19 posts and indicated significant differences in network metrics such as degree. The performance of our deep learning classifiers was reasonable, with an F-measure of 0.80 for speech acts and 0.81 for behavior constructs. Conclusions Our study highlights the strengths of community-based field studies and emphasizes the utility of large-scale social media data sets in enabling rapid intervention tailoring to adapt grassroots community interventions to thwart misinformation seeding and spread among minority communities. Implications for consumer advocacy, data governance, and industry incentives are discussed for the sustainable role of social media solutions in public health.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Lessons Learned From Interdisciplinary Efforts to Combat COVID-19 Misinformation: Development of Agile Integrative Methods From Behavioral Science, Data Science, and Implementation Science

Myneni¹,

Cuccaro²,

Montogomery³

et al. 2023

JMIR Infodemiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…FGD and interview data were transcribed and analyzed thematically [ 70 ] using Microsoft Excel. Through a heuristic process [ 66 , 71 ], multiple rounds of going through the transcribed data and field notes permitted the identification of phrases linked to the originally established question codes. These were then arranged into themes in accordance with question codes by means of cut and paste.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Reasons for Low Cataract Surgery Uptake Among Patients Detected in a Community Outreach Program in Cameroon: Focused Ethnographic Mixed Methods Study

Mbwogge¹,

Nkumbe²

2022

JMIRx Med

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, was one potential way to deal with the barriers surrounding cataract surgery and improve access to eye care. To this effect, the Magrabi International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) Cameroon Eye Institute (MICEI) has performed more than 1000 sight-restoring cataract surgeries among patients referred from outreach camps. However, quite a good number of patients diagnosed with cataracts during community screening camps fail to present for surgery. This study sought to explore some of the challenges to accepting cataract surgery among community-diagnosed patients with cataract, patients operated for cataract, and community members. Objective The study objective was 5-fold: (1) to assess the level of awareness about cataract and available treatment, (2) to explore barriers to cataract surgery uptake, (3) to assess people’s perception about the outcome of cataract surgery, (4) to understand people’s perception about free cataract surgery, and (5) to explore reasons for outright refusal of cataract surgery. Methods This was a focused ethnographic study from December 2018 through February 2019 in 3 different communities of the Center Region of Cameroon, in which patients with cataract were diagnosed. The study sample was composed of patients operated for cataract, those diagnosed with cataract, key informants, and community members. Focus group discussions (FGDs), personalized in-depth interviews, and a short demographic questionnaire were used to collect data. Data were analyzed using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and Stata 14 (StataCorp). Data were presented using tabular and graphical methods. Results A total of 29 subjects (19 men) with a mean age of 54.5 (SD 14.5) years took part in the study. The most prominent barriers to cataract surgery were found to be cost (25/29, 86%) and fear of surgery (17/29, 59%). It was also noted by 41% (12/29) of subjects that those who do not take up cataract surgery turn to traditional medicine. Other barriers included the lack of awareness of available treatment (6/29, 21%), no perceived need (5/29, 17%), cultural beliefs and superstition (4/29, 14%), and negligence (4/29, 14%). Conclusions We found cost (25/29, 86%) and fear (17/29, 59%) to be the main barriers. Belief in traditional medicine and superstition were the main drivers of fear. The implementation of a tiered pricing system, counseling training for key informants, incentives for the referral of patients with cataract, mass media engagement, advocacy, training and active involvement of traditional doctors as key informants, acquisition of a 4×4 outreach van, and motorbikes for camp organizers were some of the recommendations based on our results.

show abstract

“…Banning and Sweetser, 2007;Hargittai, et al, 2010;Metzger, et al, 2010;Pan, et al, 2007). Individuals have been found to use these heuristics to assess specifically online health information (Rieh, 2014), including that gained via health apps (Kanthawala, et al, 2019) and news sources (Maggio, et al, 2020). One study found that users rely heavily on multiple complementary heuristics to evaluate the credibility of online health information rather than employ intensive systematic processing of information (Klawitter and Harittai, 2018b).…”

Section: The Role Of Heuristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A platform for goodness, not for badness’: The heuristics of hope in patients' evaluations of online health information

Petersen

Schermuly²,

Anderson³

2022

Social Science & Medicine

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research

Cited by 8 publications

References 31 publications

Lessons Learned From Interdisciplinary Efforts to Combat COVID-19 Misinformation: Development of Agile Integrative Methods From Behavioral Science, Data Science, and Implementation Science

Lessons Learned From Interdisciplinary Efforts to Combat COVID-19 Misinformation: Development of Agile Integrative Methods From Behavioral Science, Data Science, and Implementation Science

Exploring the Reasons for Low Cataract Surgery Uptake Among Patients Detected in a Community Outreach Program in Cameroon: Focused Ethnographic Mixed Methods Study

‘A platform for goodness, not for badness’: The heuristics of hope in patients' evaluations of online health information

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About