Internet and Misinformation

Although patient use of online resources to locate health-related information is increasing, few large-scale studies investigating ramifications to patient health and the patient-physician relationship have been conducted in primary care. The article attached below describes online health information–seeking behaviors among the patients. To evaluate the effects of this information on patient self-care and the patient-physician relationship. Although many concerns have been expressed about resulting changes in patient-physician dynamics, online information gathering has the potential to foster greater patient engagement in health maintenance and care.

Read more: //jaoa.org/article.aspx?articleid=2093534

In the given article “Seeking Formula for Misinformation Treatment in Public Health Crises: The Effects of Corrective Information Type and Source”

Effects of corrective information type (factual elaboration vs. simple rebuttal) and source (government health agency vs. news media vs. social peers) on individuals’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses were investigated after initial misinformation exposure. By relying on experimental research, it was observed that presence of corrective information can debunk misinformation and also  factual elaboration when compared to simple rebuttal, found to be able to alter individuals’ intention to take preventive actions. Furthermore, it was found that government agency and news media sources are more successful in improving belief accuracy compared to social peers.

//www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2019.1573295

IT platforms can have potential to engage patients in health care and improve health outcomes. The usefulness and acceptability of IT platforms can have great power in engagement and outcomes. Studies grounded in behavior theory appeared to show a positive impact on patient health behavior. To exploit the full potential of IT platforms in health care, concrete research is needed for better deployment of interventions as well as  to ensure participation and facilitating health behaviour change. Selecting appropriate ways to measure health behavior change and developing a common framework to analyze and understand the different components of IT platforms and their safety, effectiveness, efficiency, and acceptability will also be of great importance.

Public health crises can get more challenging with the development and spread of misinformation. Misinformation spreads because it is mainly driven by emotions, in particular fear. In “A Prologue to the Special Issue: Health Misinformation on Social Media” for dealing with this important issue, five priority areas for future research has been mentioned:

1. enhancing misinformation surveillance,
2. understanding the psychological drivers of misinformation endorsement and sharing,
3. identifying real-world consequences of misinformation,
4. intervening with those who are most vulnerable to misinformation and its consequences, and
5. developing and testing effective responses to misinformation.

With our enhancing knowledge of the misinformation ecosystem, there is an urgent need to re-examine traditional health communication theories and ongoing public health practices. It is time to discover alternative approaches to disseminate evidence-based information and mitigate the effect of misinformation. With the pandemic continuing to cause global disruptions, combatting health misinformation is one of the most urgent public health priorities of our time.

Despite the spread of misinformation, corrections are typically effective in reducing beliefs in health misinformation. The two targets for any corrective message are-the person sharing the misinformation, and the community of individuals seeing the misinformation or the correction.

In “Correction as a Solution for Health Misinformation on Social Media” best practices for engaging in an observational correction on social media have been stated which includes citing highly credible factual information with links to expert sources. For boosting the power of corrections, a coherent alternative explanation for the misinformation can be delivered. Repetition is a standard communication strategy and can become necessary when multiple corrections are made to reinforce a message, resulting in reduced misperceptions. In addition to these, correcting misinformation early can be an effective strategy before misinformation spreads.

Disinformation is a coordinated or deliberate effort to knowingly circulate misinformation in order to gain money, power, or reputation. Because public health is a field in which there are obvious winners and losers, and the losers have significant financial loss at stake, it is a venue where disinformation can thrive. While the usage of the term disinformation is somewhat mixed in the literature, we eschew the use of the term to refer to a subtype of misinformation because disinformation incorporates the notion of intentionality, which is an attribute of the people spreading the information rather than of the information itself. An example of disinformation would be when the sugar industry funded research that successfully cast doubt on the health risks of sugar (and fat was blamed as the culprit . By contrast, the popular misconception that sugar causes hyperactivity in children does not have an apparent vested interest behind it, and so it can be considered misinformation . Unfortunately, teasing apart disinformation from misinformation can be extremely difficult, given that intent behind a message is not always transparent or constant from messenger to messenger.

the same concequence were seening in against of Coviedshield ad the condition is that a lot of IAS at supreme position have to drawn the letter against of misinformation sharing to be booked under IPC 1860 and Disaster Act of 2005.

refrence to letter of Ajay Bhalla IAS dated 19th Jan 2021

"Infodemic" —a term coined by WHO means an overabundance of information and the rapid circulation of misleading or fabricated news, images, and video. It is highly contagious and grows exponentially and has complicated COVID-19 pandemic response efforts. To curb some of the misinformation spreading on social media platforms, WHO has taken some measures.

It has been working closely with social media and technology companies like Facebook, TikTok, Google, Viber, WhatsApp, and YouTube to ensure that science-based health messages from the organization or other official sources appear first when people search for information related to COVID-19. 

WHO is also working with an analytics company to incorporate social listening into its public health messaging development.

Read Immunizing the public against misinformation for more information.

@harpreet

Agree, the swirl of online falsehoods can range from deliberate lies to genuine confusion and errors and are often prevalent alongside health threats like coronavirus infection. The plethora of misinformation makes it challenging for decision-makers, healthcare professionals and the general population to filter out truthful and reliable guidance. To overcome this problem, the UN Global Pulse initiative partnered with WHO Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) to provide insights on a) misinformation on the internet that puts the health of the general public at risk and b) important information about COVID-19 disease and health. 

In order to filter relevant information, the UN Global Pulse created a taxonomy of keywords and categorized the comments around certain themes: vaccine production, WHO response, alternatives cures, etc. Artificial intelligence and big data were utilised and data analysis was conducted on various social media platforms such as Twitter, news channels, websites, Youtube and blogs, to inform a) the trends and spread of misinformation and rumours about specific events flagged by WHO and b) a sentiment analysis around WHO and other organizations’ efforts with regard to fighting COVID-19. The analysis is an ongoing process which the UN Global Pulse reports on a weekly basis. The results of this are then used to issue recommendations and solutions for a timely course correction of communications and better target the engagement strategies.

In addition to this, all population groups do not have access to the internet or social media, but they remain just as exposed to misinformation as others. To overcome this digital gap, the UN Global Pulse initiative, which uses artificial intelligence and big data to tackle development and humanitarian issues and apply social listening to nations like Uganda where the radio is a popular medium for seeking information of health issues.

Read more at: //www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/immunizing-the-public-against-misinformation

@ritikakaur 👍 thanks

• coverage given to social platform
• Community voice
• artificial intelligence
• image depiction on EPIWIN too

The same paper is referred by one of us before too.

In the present-day digital world, it is challenging to function comprehensively, given our increasing reliance on the internet. The professional and personal blogs, podcasts, chat rooms and forums are hallmarks of today’s medical care and a prominent source of health information among different kind of audiences, including the present group of general practitioners.

Hence, there is an ever-increasing need to check and evaluate data sources, particularly news items related to health and disease. The article referred below talks about the misinformation available on internet and to avoid pitfalls and perils. 

Read more: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6910766/

I agree with the statement that " the Internet has become a popular resource to learn about health. However, given a large amount of inaccurate information online, people can easily become misinformed". We have to be more vigilant towards disinformation as well coming out from the social media drive on health issues.

Disinformation and misinformation about the public health issues are different and both are a serious threat to public health in most of LMICs. At times, social media platforms have facilitated an informational environment that in combination with other factors has complicated the public health response, enabled widespread confusion, and contributed to loss of life during the pandemic. Incorrect knowledge often prompt individuals to search for data/information from the irrelevant websites where they seek out data that would confirm their initial incorrect hypothesis or estimations. This is also documented as one of bias called "confirmation bias". In current pandemic, it is important to understand the difference and adhere to known and reliable sources for knowledge exchange.

Completely agree that internet has become an important source of health information for users worldwide which is helpful for the people in so many ways. But broad dissemination of false or misleading health information is an another subject of concern. At the present COVID-19 scenario, infodemic is an additional burden for the government of all regions which needs to be taken care of. To resolve it, some of the governments has also came up with strict guidelines and policies which stated strict actions against the sources of misinformation. There were also various awareness programs, campaigns, posters to deal with the same.

A good quality of information is available on the internet and with the government. IEC programs are also going on by the authority. But it seems to be failing at ground level. People are not following the instructions properly. To tackle this implementation gap if the situation demands then we have to take help from the religious leaders. They have a strong hold on people. With the help of them, the government can reach a large number of devotees, followers and address the vaccine hesitancy in people and encourage them to get vaccinated.

Only providing information is not enough in the practical scenario. How people are perceiving those information that also we have to take into account. To know how tribal communities of our country are reacting to this pandemic an ethnographic study should be conducted at the government level. This study will help to implement the policies in those areas which are somewhat isolated from mainland India.

We have seen different Covid19 treatment protocols are made at the government level within India and as a top down approach doctors are following those in various hospitals. Due to lack of proper training of managing covid19 cases a lot of medicines are being used unethically to treat which is dangerous for the patients. I think most of the covid19 deaths were preventable. I understand that the sudden rise of covid19 patients in the country gave no chance to react efficiently by our health system. But covid19 situation is not a new event in the world. It started in 2019. We have got enough time to learn from the scenarios of previous experiences and to build a well organised medical infrastructure. But we failed to do that and faced the second wave of covid19. Regular training of health workers on covid19 cases is very important to contain the death count in the country.

Covid19 treatment protocols are made for the doctors and the treatment purpose not for the general public. But these protocols are available in the public domain which increase the rate of unnecessary purchasing and stocking of medicines. This has increased the rate of self medication of antibiotics, antipyretic drugs etc. which is not good for the health of our society.

As we know, the internet has been a major part of our lives for decades now due to its usefulness in all sectors. But, in medicine, especially for the clinical aspects, it has always created a misconception and doubt on the credibility of the qualified doctors by presenting vague symptoms, diagnosis, and line of treatment. Even pertaining to the current situation of the Covid 19 pandemic, the has been numerous misconceptions regarding the same as mentioned in the various replies above. Moreover, the myths regarding the Covid 19 vaccination have also created havoc and lead to many reasons for vaccination hesitancy. Due to which the some of the populations are still hesitant to take the vaccination.

For this purpose, the great initiative has been taken by WHO on, How to report misinformation online?; by reporting various sites which are doing it.

read: //www.who.int/campaigns/connecting-the-world-to-combat-coronavirus/how-to-report-misinformation-online?