JMIR infodemiology最新文献

Background: Traditionally, surveys are conducted to answer questions related to public health but can be costly to execute. However, the information that researchers aim to extract from surveys could potentially be retrieved from social media, which possesses data that are highly accessible and lower in cost to collect.

Objective: This study aims to evaluate whether attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines collected from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) could be predicted using attitudes extracted from Twitter (subsequently rebranded X). Ultimately, this study aimed to determine whether Twitter can provide us with similar information to that observed in traditional surveys or whether saving money comes at the cost of losing rich data.

Methods: COVID-19 vaccine attitudes were extracted from the HPS conducted between January 6 and May 25, 2021. Twitter's streaming application programming interface was used to collect COVID-19 vaccine tweets during the same period. A sentiment and emotion analysis of tweets was conducted to examine attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine on Twitter. Generalized linear models and generalized linear mixed models were used to evaluate the ability of COVID-19 vaccine attitudes on Twitter to predict vaccine attitudes in the HPS.

Results: The results revealed that vaccine perceptions expressed on Twitter performed well in predicting vaccine perceptions in the survey.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that the information researchers aim to extract from surveys could potentially also be retrieved from a more accessible data source, such as Twitter. Leveraging Twitter data alongside traditional surveys can provide a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of COVID-19 vaccine perceptions, facilitating evidence-based decision-making and tailored public health strategies.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated rapid real-time surveillance of epidemiological data to advise governments and the public, but the accuracy of these data depends on myriad auxiliary assumptions, not least accurate reporting of cases by the public. Wastewater monitoring has emerged internationally as an accurate and objective means for assessing disease prevalence with reduced latency and less dependence on public vigilance, reliability, and engagement. How public interest aligns with COVID-19 personal testing data and wastewater monitoring is, however, very poorly characterized.

Objective: This study aims to assess the associations between internet search volume data relevant to COVID-19, public health care statistics, and national-scale wastewater monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 across South Wales, United Kingdom, over time to investigate how interest in the pandemic may reflect the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2, as detected by national testing and wastewater monitoring, and how these data could be used to predict case numbers.

Methods: Relative search volume data from Google Trends for search terms linked to the COVID-19 pandemic were extracted and compared against government-reported COVID-19 statistics and quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) SARS-CoV-2 data generated from wastewater in South Wales, United Kingdom, using multivariate linear models, correlation analysis, and predictions from linear models.

Results: Wastewater monitoring, most infoveillance terms, and nationally reported cases significantly correlated, but these relationships changed over time. Wastewater surveillance data and some infoveillance search terms generated predictions of case numbers that correlated with reported case numbers, but the accuracy of these predictions was inconsistent and many of the relationships changed over time.

Conclusions: Wastewater monitoring presents a valuable means for assessing population-level prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 and could be integrated with other data types such as infoveillance for increasingly accurate inference of virus prevalence. The importance of such monitoring is increasingly clear as a means of objectively assessing the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 to circumvent the dynamic interest and participation of the public. Increased accessibility of wastewater monitoring data to the public, as is the case for other national data, may enhance public engagement with these forms of monitoring.

Background: Health misinformation shared on social media can have negative health consequences; yet, there is a dearth of field research testing interventions to address health misinformation in real time, digitally, and in situ on social media.

Objective: We describe a field study of a pilot program of "infodemiologists" trained with evidence-informed intervention techniques heavily influenced by principles of motivational interviewing. Here we provide a detailed description of the nature of infodemiologists' interventions on posts sharing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, present an initial evaluation framework for such field research, and use available engagement metrics to quantify the impact of these in-group messengers on the web-based threads on which they are intervening.

Methods: We monitored Facebook (Meta Platforms, Inc) profiles of news organizations marketing to 3 geographic regions (Newark, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; and central Texas). Between December 2020 and April 2021, infodemiologists intervened in 145 Facebook news posts that generated comments containing either false or misleading information about vaccines or overt antivaccine sentiment. Engagement (emojis plus replies) data were collected on Facebook news posts, the initial comment containing misinformation (level 1 comment), and the infodemiologist's reply (level 2 reply comment). A comparison-group evaluation design was used, with numbers of replies, emoji reactions, and engagements for level 1 comments compared with the median metrics of matched comments using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Level 2 reply comments (intervention) were also benchmarked against the corresponding metric of matched reply comments (control) using the Wilcoxon signed rank test (paired at the level 1 comment level). Infodemiologists' level 2 reply comments (intervention) and matched reply comments (control) were further compared using 3 Poisson regression models.

Results: In total, 145 interventions were conducted on 132 Facebook news posts. The level 1 comments received a median of 3 replies, 3 reactions, and 7 engagements. The matched comments received a median of 1.5 (median of IQRs 3.75) engagements. Infodemiologists made 322 level 2 reply comments, precipitating 189 emoji reactions and a median of 0.5 (median of IQRs IQR 0) engagements. The matched reply comments received a median of 1 (median of IQRs 2.5) engagement. Compared to matched comments, level 1 comments received more replies, emoji reactions, and engagements. Compared to matched reply comments, level 2 reply comments received fewer and narrower ranges of replies, reactions, and engagements, except for the median comparison for replies.

Conclusions: Overall, empathy-first communication strategies based on motivational interviewing garnered less engagement relative to matched controls. One possible explanation i

Background: TikTok is a popular social media platform that allows users to create and share content through short videos. It has become a place for everyday users, especially Generation Z users, to share experiences about their reproductive health. Owing to its growing popularity and easy accessibility, TikTok can help raise awareness for reproductive health issues as well as help destigmatize these conversations.

Objective: We aimed to identify and understand the visual, audio, and written components of content that TikTok users create about their reproductive health experiences.

Methods: A sampling framework was implemented to narrow down the analytic data set. The top 6 videos from each targeted hashtag (eg, #BirthControl, #MyBodyMyChoice, and #LoveYourself) were extracted biweekly for 16 weeks (July-November 2020). During data collection, we noted video characteristics such as captioning, music, likes, and cited sources. Qualitative content analysis was performed on the extracted videos.

Results: The top videos in each hashtag were consistent over time; for example, only 11 videos appeared in the top 6 category for #BirthControl throughout the data collection. Most videos fell into 2 primary categories: personal experiences and informational content. Among the personal experiences, people shared stories (eg, intrauterine device removal experiences), crafts (eg, painting their pill case), or humor (eg, celebrations of the arrival of their period). Dancing and demonstrations were commonly used in informational content.

Conclusions: TikTok is used to share messages on myriad reproductive health topics. Understanding users' exposure provides important insights into their beliefs and knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. The study findings can be used to generate valuable information for teenagers and young adults, their health care providers, and their communities. Producing health messages that are both meaningful and accessible will contribute to the cocreation of critical health information for professional and personal use.

Background: The rampant spread of misinformation about COVID-19 has been linked to a lower uptake of preventive behaviors such as vaccination. Some individuals, however, have been able to resist believing in COVID-19 misinformation. Further, some have acted as information advocates, spreading accurate information and combating misinformation about the pandemic.

Objective: This work explores highly knowledgeable information advocates' perspectives, behaviors, and information-related practices.

Methods: To identify participants for this study, we used outcomes of survey research of a national sample of 1498 adults to find individuals who scored a perfect or near-perfect score on COVID-19 knowledge questions and who also self-reported actively sharing or responding to news information within the past week. Among this subsample, we selected a diverse sample of 25 individuals to participate in a 1-time, phone-based, semistructured interview. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the team conducted an inductive thematic analysis.

Results: Participants reported trusting in science, data-driven sources, public health, medical experts, and organizations. They had mixed levels of trust in various social media sites to find reliable health information, noting distrust in particular sites such as Facebook (Meta Platforms) and more trust in specific accounts on Twitter (X Corp) and Reddit (Advance Publications). They reported relying on multiple sources of information to find facts instead of depending on their intuition and emotions to inform their perspectives about COVID-19. Participants determined the credibility of information by cross-referencing it, identifying information sources and their potential biases, clarifying information they were unclear about with health care providers, and using fact-checking sites to verify information. Most participants reported ignoring misinformation. Others, however, responded to misinformation by flagging, reporting, and responding to it on social media sites. Some described feeling more comfortable responding to misinformation in person than online. Participants' responses to misinformation posted on the internet depended on various factors, including their relationship to the individual posting the misinformation, their level of outrage in response to it, and how dangerous they perceived it could be if others acted on such information.

Conclusions: This research illustrates how well-informed US adults assess the credibility of COVID-19 information, how they share it, and how they respond to misinformation. It illustrates web-based and offline information practices and describes how the role of interpersonal relationships contributes to their preferences for acting on such information. Implications of our findings could help inform future training in health information literacy, interpersonal infor

Background: Methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant that affects the central nervous system. Crystal methamphetamine is a form of the drug resembling glass fragments or shiny bluish-white rocks that can be taken through smoking, swallowing, snorting, or injecting the powder once it has been dissolved in water or alcohol.

Objective: The objective of this study is to examine how identities are socially (discursively) constructed by people who use methamphetamine within a subreddit for people who regularly use crystal meth.

Methods: Using a mixed methods approach, we analyzed 1000 threads (318,422 words) from a subreddit for regular crystal meth users. The qualitative component of the analysis used concordancing and corpus-based discourse analysis to identify discursive themes informed by assemblage theory. The quantitative portion of the analysis used corpus linguistic techniques including keyword analysis to identify words occurring with statistically marked frequency in the corpus and collocation analysis to analyze their discursive context.

Results: Our findings reveal that the subreddit contributors use a rich and varied lexicon to describe crystal meth and other substances, ranging from a neuroscientific register (eg, methamphetamine and dopamine) to informal vernacular (eg, meth, dope, and fent) and commercial appellations (eg, Adderall and Seroquel). They also use linguistic resources to construct symbolic boundaries between different types of methamphetamine users, differentiating between the esteemed category of "functional addicts" and relegating others to the stigmatized category of "tweakers." In addition, contributors contest the dominant view that methamphetamine use inevitably leads to psychosis, arguing instead for a more nuanced understanding that considers the interplay of factors such as sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and neglected hygiene.

Conclusions: The subreddit contributors' discourse offers a "set and setting" perspective, which provides a fresh viewpoint on drug-induced psychosis and can guide future harm reduction strategies and research. In contrast to this view, many previous studies overlook the real-world complexities of methamphetamine use, perhaps due to the use of controlled experimental settings. Actual drug use, intoxication, and addiction are complex, multifaceted, and elusive phenomena that defy straightforward characterization.

Background: During the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, social media has been extensively used to amplify the spread of information and to express personal health-related experiences regarding symptoms, including anosmia and ageusia, 2 symptoms that have been reported later than other symptoms.

Objective: Our objective is to investigate to what extent Twitter users reported anosmia and ageusia symptoms in their tweets and if they connected them to COVID-19, to evaluate whether these symptoms could have been identified as COVID-19 symptoms earlier using Twitter rather than the official notice.

Methods: We collected French tweets posted between January 1, 2020, and March 31, 2020, containing anosmia- or ageusia-related keywords. Symptoms were detected using fuzzy matching. The analysis consisted of 3 parts. First, we compared the coverage of anosmia and ageusia symptoms in Twitter and in traditional media to determine if the association between COVID-19 and anosmia or ageusia could have been identified earlier through Twitter. Second, we conducted a manual analysis of anosmia- and ageusia-related tweets to obtain quantitative and qualitative insights regarding their nature and to assess when the first associations between COVID-19 and these symptoms were established. We randomly annotated tweets from 2 periods: the early stage and the rapid spread stage of the epidemic. For each tweet, each symptom was annotated regarding 3 modalities: symptom (yes or no), associated with COVID-19 (yes, no, or unknown), and whether it was experienced by someone (yes, no, or unknown). Third, to evaluate if there was a global increase of tweets mentioning anosmia or ageusia in early 2020, corresponding to the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, we compared the tweets reporting experienced anosmia or ageusia between the first periods of 2019 and 2020.

Results: In total, 832 (respectively 12,544) tweets containing anosmia (respectively ageusia) related keywords were extracted over the analysis period in 2020. The comparison to traditional media showed a strong correlation without any lag, which suggests an important reactivity of Twitter but no earlier detection on Twitter. The annotation of tweets from 2020 showed that tweets correlating anosmia or ageusia with COVID-19 could be found a few days before the official announcement. However, no association could be found during the first stage of the pandemic. Information about the temporality of symptoms and the psychological impact of these symptoms could be found in the tweets. The comparison between early 2020 and early 2019 showed no difference regarding the volumes of tweets.

Conclusions: Based on our analysis of French tweets, associations between COVID-19 and anosmia or ageusia by web users could have been found on Twitter just a few days before the official announcement but not during the early stage of

Background: The use of social media platforms to seek information continues to increase. Social media platforms can be used to disseminate important information to people worldwide instantaneously. However, their viral nature also makes it easy to share misinformation, disinformation, unverified information, and fake news. The unprecedented reliance on social media platforms to seek information during the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by increased incidents of misinformation and disinformation. Consequently, there was an increase in the number of scientific publications related to the role of social media in disseminating health misinformation and disinformation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Health misinformation and disinformation, especially in periods of global public health disasters, can lead to the erosion of trust in policy makers at best and fatal consequences at worst.

Objective: This paper reports a bibliometric analysis aimed at investigating the evolution of research publications related to the role of social media as a driver of health misinformation and disinformation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this study aimed to identify the top trending keywords, niche topics, authors, and publishers for publishing papers related to the current research, as well as the global collaboration between authors on topics related to the role of social media in health misinformation and disinformation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: The Scopus database was accessed on June 8, 2023, using a combination of Medical Subject Heading and author-defined terms to create the following search phrases that targeted the title, abstract, and keyword fields: ("Health*" OR "Medical") AND ("Misinformation" OR "Disinformation" OR "Fake News") AND ("Social media" OR "Twitter" OR "Facebook" OR "YouTube" OR "WhatsApp" OR "Instagram" OR "TikTok") AND ("Pandemic*" OR "Corona*" OR "Covid*"). A total of 943 research papers published between 2020 and June 2023 were analyzed using Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation), VOSviewer (Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University), and the Biblioshiny package in Bibliometrix (K-Synth Srl) for RStudio (Posit, PBC).

Results: The highest number of publications was from 2022 (387/943, 41%). Most publications (725/943, 76.9%) were articles. JMIR published the most research papers (54/943, 5.7%). Authors from the United States collaborated the most, with 311 coauthored research papers. The keywords "Covid-19," "social media," and "misinformation" were the top 3 trending keywords, whereas "learning systems," "learning models," and "learning algorithms" were revealed as the niche topics on the role of social media in health misinformation and disinformation during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Conclusions: Collaborations between authors can increase their produc

Social media has proven to be valuable for disseminating public health information during pandemics. However, the circulation of misinformation through social media during public health emergencies, such as the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), Ebola, and COVID-19 pandemics, has seriously hampered effective responses, leading to negative consequences. Intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news aims to harm organizations and individuals. To effectively respond to misinformation, governments should strengthen the management of an "infodemic," which involves monitoring the impact of infodemics through social listening, detecting signals of infodemic spread, mitigating the harmful effects of infodemics, and strengthening the resilience of individuals and communities. The global spread of misinformation requires multisectoral collaboration, such as researchers identifying leading sources of misinformation and superspreaders, media agencies identifying and debunking misinformation, technology platforms reducing the distribution of false or misleading posts and guiding users to health information from credible sources, and governments disseminating clear public health information in partnership with trusted messengers. Additionally, fact-checking has room for improvement through the use of automated checks. Collaboration between governments and fact-checking agencies should also be strengthened via effective and timely debunking mechanisms. Though the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) has yet to define the term "infodemic," Article 18 of the INB Bureau's text, developed for the Pandemic Accord, encompasses a range of actions aimed at enhancing infodemic management. The INB Bureau continues to facilitate evidence-informed discussion for an implementable article on infodemic management.

Background: During the early pandemic, there was substantial variation in public and government responses to COVID-19 in Europe and the United States. Mass media are a vital source of health information and news, frequently disseminating this information through social media, and may influence public and policy responses to the pandemic.

Objective: This study aims to describe the extent to which major media outlets in the United States and Spain tweeted about health-related behaviors (HRBs) relevant to COVID-19, compare the tweeting patterns between media outlets of both countries, and determine user engagement in response to these tweets.

Methods: We investigated tweets posted by 30 major media outlets (n=17, 57% from Spain and n=13, 43% from the United States) between December 1, 2019 and May 31, 2020, which included keywords related to HRBs relevant to COVID-19. We classified tweets into 6 categories: mask-wearing, physical distancing, handwashing, quarantine or confinement, disinfecting objects, or multiple HRBs (any combination of the prior HRB categories). Additionally, we assessed the likes and retweets generated by each tweet. Poisson regression analyses compared the average predicted number of likes and retweets between the different HRB categories and between countries.

Results: Of 50,415 tweets initially collected, 8552 contained content associated with an HRB relevant to COVID-19. Of these, 600 were randomly chosen for training, and 2351 tweets were randomly selected for manual content analysis. Of the 2351 COVID-19-related tweets included in the content analysis, 62.91% (1479/2351) mentioned at least one HRB. The proportion of COVID-19 tweets mentioning at least one HRB differed significantly between countries (P=.006). Quarantine or confinement was mentioned in nearly half of all the HRB tweets in both countries. In contrast, the least frequently mentioned HRBs were disinfecting objects in Spain 6.9% (56/809) and handwashing in the United States 9.1% (61/670). For tweets from the United States mentioning at least one HRB, disinfecting objects had the highest median likes and retweets, whereas mask-wearing- and handwashing-related tweets achieved the highest median number of likes in Spain. Tweets from Spain that mentioned social distancing or disinfecting objects had a significantly lower predicted count of likes compared with tweets mentioning a different HRB (P=.02 and P=.01, respectively). Tweets from the United States that mentioned quarantine or confinement or disinfecting objects had a significantly lower predicted number of likes compared with tweets mentioning a different HRB (P<.001), whereas mask- and handwashing-related tweets had a significantly greater predicted number of likes (P=.04 and P=.02, respectively).

Conclusions: The type of HRB content and engagement with media outlet tweets varied between Spain and