{"title":"Their Truth is Out There: Scientific (Dis)trust and Alternative Epistemology in Online Health Groups","authors":"Megan E. Cullinan, Melissa Zimdars, Kilhoe Na","doi":"10.1177/20563051241269288","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The information-sharing practices within alternative health social media groups makes them important spaces for analyzing and understanding the factors shaping the online spread of alternative health and health science (mis)information. Through interviews and observation of participants in alternative health groups on both Facebook and Reddit, we explore how people use health science information from government, health, and news sources, alternative health information from social media groups, and their own personal experiences and concerns to define informational (dis)trustworthiness. We identify factors that lead participants to (dis)trust health science information and explore how members assess the (dis)trustworthiness of health science information using an alternative epistemology. This alternative epistemology, or “their science,” demonstrates a trust in science unless or until it contradicts members’ experiences, beliefs, contextual concerns, or their own “research” practices.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Media + Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241269288","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The information-sharing practices within alternative health social media groups makes them important spaces for analyzing and understanding the factors shaping the online spread of alternative health and health science (mis)information. Through interviews and observation of participants in alternative health groups on both Facebook and Reddit, we explore how people use health science information from government, health, and news sources, alternative health information from social media groups, and their own personal experiences and concerns to define informational (dis)trustworthiness. We identify factors that lead participants to (dis)trust health science information and explore how members assess the (dis)trustworthiness of health science information using an alternative epistemology. This alternative epistemology, or “their science,” demonstrates a trust in science unless or until it contradicts members’ experiences, beliefs, contextual concerns, or their own “research” practices.
期刊介绍：
Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.
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