Safwat Beirakdar, Leon Klingborg, Sibylle Herzig van Wees
Background Social media have played an important role in shaping COVID-19 vaccine choices during the pandemic. Understanding people’s attitudes toward the vaccine as expressed on social media can help address the concerns of vaccine-hesitant individuals. Objective The aim of this study was to understand the attitudes of Swedish-speaking Twitter users toward COVID-19 vaccines. Methods This was an exploratory qualitative study that used a social media–listening approach. Between January and March 2022, a total of 2877 publicly available tweets in Swedish were systematically extracted from Twitter. A deductive thematic analysis was conducted using the World Health Organization’s 3C model (confidence, complacency, and convenience). Results Confidence in the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine appeared to be a major concern expressed on Twitter. Unclear governmental strategies in managing the pandemic in Sweden and the belief in conspiracy theories have further influenced negative attitudes toward vaccines. Complacency—the perceived risk of COVID-19 was low and booster vaccination was unnecessary; many expressed trust in natural immunity. Convenience—in terms of accessing the right information and the vaccine—highlighted a knowledge gap about the benefits and necessity of the vaccine, as well as complaints about the quality of vaccination services. Conclusions Swedish-speaking Twitter users in this study had negative attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines, particularly booster vaccines. We identified attitudes toward vaccines and misinformation, indicating that social media monitoring can help policy makers respond by developing proactive health communication interventions.
{"title":"Attitudes of Swedish Language Twitter Users Toward COVID-19 Vaccination: Exploratory Qualitative Study.","authors":"Safwat Beirakdar, Leon Klingborg, Sibylle Herzig van Wees","doi":"10.2196/42357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/42357","url":null,"abstract":"Background Social media have played an important role in shaping COVID-19 vaccine choices during the pandemic. Understanding people’s attitudes toward the vaccine as expressed on social media can help address the concerns of vaccine-hesitant individuals. Objective The aim of this study was to understand the attitudes of Swedish-speaking Twitter users toward COVID-19 vaccines. Methods This was an exploratory qualitative study that used a social media–listening approach. Between January and March 2022, a total of 2877 publicly available tweets in Swedish were systematically extracted from Twitter. A deductive thematic analysis was conducted using the World Health Organization’s 3C model (confidence, complacency, and convenience). Results Confidence in the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine appeared to be a major concern expressed on Twitter. Unclear governmental strategies in managing the pandemic in Sweden and the belief in conspiracy theories have further influenced negative attitudes toward vaccines. Complacency—the perceived risk of COVID-19 was low and booster vaccination was unnecessary; many expressed trust in natural immunity. Convenience—in terms of accessing the right information and the vaccine—highlighted a knowledge gap about the benefits and necessity of the vaccine, as well as complaints about the quality of vaccination services. Conclusions Swedish-speaking Twitter users in this study had negative attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines, particularly booster vaccines. We identified attitudes toward vaccines and misinformation, indicating that social media monitoring can help policy makers respond by developing proactive health communication interventions.","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e42357"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9996415/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9616878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthew P Abrams, Arthur P Pelullo, Zachary F Meisel, Raina M Merchant, Jonathan Purtle, Anish K Agarwal
Background: Burnout and the mental health burden of the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately impacted health care workers. The links between state policies, federal regulations, COVID-19 case counts, strains on health care systems, and the mental health of health care workers continue to evolve. The language used by state and federal legislators in public-facing venues such as social media is important, as it impacts public opinion and behavior, and it also reflects current policy-leader opinions and planned legislation.
Objective: The objective of this study was to examine legislators' social media content on Twitter and Facebook throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to thematically characterize policy makers' attitudes and perspectives related to mental health and burnout in the health care workforce.
Methods: Legislators' social media posts about mental health and burnout in the health care workforce were collected from January 2020 to November 2021 using Quorum, a digital database of policy-related documents. The total number of relevant social media posts per state legislator per calendar month was calculated and compared with COVID-19 case volume. Differences between themes expressed in Democratic and Republican posts were estimated using the Pearson chi-square test. Words within social media posts most associated with each political party were determined. Machine-learning was used to evaluate naturally occurring themes in the burnout- and mental health-related social media posts.
Results: A total of 4165 social media posts (1400 tweets and 2765 Facebook posts) were generated by 2047 unique state and federal legislators and 38 government entities. The majority of posts (n=2319, 55.68%) were generated by Democrats, followed by Republicans (n=1600, 40.34%). Among both parties, the volume of burnout-related posts was greatest during the initial COVID-19 surge. However, there was significant variation in the themes expressed by the 2 major political parties. Themes most correlated with Democratic posts were (1) frontline care and burnout, (2) vaccines, (3) COVID-19 outbreaks, and (4) mental health services. Themes most correlated with Republican social media posts were (1) legislation, (2) call for local action, (3) government support, and (4) health care worker testing and mental health.
Conclusions: State and federal legislators use social media to share opinions and thoughts on key topics, including burnout and mental health strain among health care workers. Variations in the volume of posts indicated that a focus on burnout and the mental health of the health care workforce existed early in the pandemic but has waned. Significant differences emerged in the content posted by the 2 major US political parties, underscoring how each prioritized different aspects of the crisis.
{"title":"State and Federal Legislators' Responses on Social Media to the Mental Health and Burnout of Health Care Workers Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic: Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis.","authors":"Matthew P Abrams, Arthur P Pelullo, Zachary F Meisel, Raina M Merchant, Jonathan Purtle, Anish K Agarwal","doi":"10.2196/38676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/38676","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Burnout and the mental health burden of the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately impacted health care workers. The links between state policies, federal regulations, COVID-19 case counts, strains on health care systems, and the mental health of health care workers continue to evolve. The language used by state and federal legislators in public-facing venues such as social media is important, as it impacts public opinion and behavior, and it also reflects current policy-leader opinions and planned legislation.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>The objective of this study was to examine legislators' social media content on Twitter and Facebook throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to thematically characterize policy makers' attitudes and perspectives related to mental health and burnout in the health care workforce.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Legislators' social media posts about mental health and burnout in the health care workforce were collected from January 2020 to November 2021 using Quorum, a digital database of policy-related documents. The total number of relevant social media posts per state legislator per calendar month was calculated and compared with COVID-19 case volume. Differences between themes expressed in Democratic and Republican posts were estimated using the Pearson chi-square test. Words within social media posts most associated with each political party were determined. Machine-learning was used to evaluate naturally occurring themes in the burnout- and mental health-related social media posts.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 4165 social media posts (1400 tweets and 2765 Facebook posts) were generated by 2047 unique state and federal legislators and 38 government entities. The majority of posts (n=2319, 55.68%) were generated by Democrats, followed by Republicans (n=1600, 40.34%). Among both parties, the volume of burnout-related posts was greatest during the initial COVID-19 surge. However, there was significant variation in the themes expressed by the 2 major political parties. Themes most correlated with Democratic posts were (1) frontline care and burnout, (2) vaccines, (3) COVID-19 outbreaks, and (4) mental health services. Themes most correlated with Republican social media posts were (1) legislation, (2) call for local action, (3) government support, and (4) health care worker testing and mental health.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>State and federal legislators use social media to share opinions and thoughts on key topics, including burnout and mental health strain among health care workers. Variations in the volume of posts indicated that a focus on burnout and the mental health of the health care workforce existed early in the pandemic but has waned. Significant differences emerged in the content posted by the 2 major US political parties, underscoring how each prioritized different aspects of the crisis.</p>","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e38676"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10007003/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9328043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p><strong>Background: </strong>South Asians, inclusive of individuals originating in India, Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal, comprise the largest diaspora in the world, with large South Asian communities residing in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and elsewhere. There is evidence that South Asian communities have disproportionately experienced COVID-19 infections and mortality. WhatsApp, a free messaging app, is widely used in transnational communication within the South Asian diaspora. Limited studies exist on COVID-19-related misinformation specific to the South Asian community on WhatsApp. Understanding communication on WhatsApp may improve public health messaging to address COVID-19 disparities among South Asian communities worldwide.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>We developed the COVID-19-Associated misinfoRmation On Messaging apps (CAROM) study to identify messages containing misinformation about COVID-19 shared via WhatsApp.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We collected messages forwarded globally through WhatsApp from self-identified South Asian community members between March 23 and June 3, 2021. We excluded messages that were in languages other than English, did not contain misinformation, or were not relevant to COVID-19. We deidentified each message and coded them for one or more content categories, media types (eg, video, image, text, web link, or a combination of these elements), and tone (eg, fearful, well intentioned, or pleading). We then performed a qualitative content analysis to arrive at key themes of COVID-19 misinformation.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We received 108 messages; 55 messages met the inclusion criteria for the final analytic sample; 32 (58%) contained text, 15 (27%) contained images, and 13 (24%) contained video. Content analysis revealed the following themes: "community transmission" relating to misinformation on how COVID-19 spreads in the community; "prevention" and "treatment," including Ayurvedic and traditional remedies for how to prevent or treat COVID-19 infection; and messaging attempting to sell "products or services" to prevent or cure COVID-19. Messages varied in audience from the general public to South Asians specifically; the latter included messages alluding to South Asian pride and solidarity. Scientific jargon and references to major organizations and leaders in health care were included to provide credibility. Messages with a pleading tone encouraged users to forward them to friends or family.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Misinformation in the South Asian community on WhatsApp spreads erroneous ideas regarding disease transmission, prevention, and treatment. Content evoking solidarity, "trustworthy" sources, and encouragement to forward messages may increase the spread of misinformation. Public health outlets and social media companies must actively combat misinformation to address health disparities among the South Asian diaspora during the COVID-19
{"title":"COVID-19-Associated Misinformation Across the South Asian Diaspora: Qualitative Study of WhatsApp Messages.","authors":"Anjana E Sharma, Kiran Khosla, Kameswari Potharaju, Arnab Mukherjea, Urmimala Sarkar","doi":"10.2196/38607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/38607","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>South Asians, inclusive of individuals originating in India, Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal, comprise the largest diaspora in the world, with large South Asian communities residing in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and elsewhere. There is evidence that South Asian communities have disproportionately experienced COVID-19 infections and mortality. WhatsApp, a free messaging app, is widely used in transnational communication within the South Asian diaspora. Limited studies exist on COVID-19-related misinformation specific to the South Asian community on WhatsApp. Understanding communication on WhatsApp may improve public health messaging to address COVID-19 disparities among South Asian communities worldwide.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>We developed the COVID-19-Associated misinfoRmation On Messaging apps (CAROM) study to identify messages containing misinformation about COVID-19 shared via WhatsApp.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We collected messages forwarded globally through WhatsApp from self-identified South Asian community members between March 23 and June 3, 2021. We excluded messages that were in languages other than English, did not contain misinformation, or were not relevant to COVID-19. We deidentified each message and coded them for one or more content categories, media types (eg, video, image, text, web link, or a combination of these elements), and tone (eg, fearful, well intentioned, or pleading). We then performed a qualitative content analysis to arrive at key themes of COVID-19 misinformation.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We received 108 messages; 55 messages met the inclusion criteria for the final analytic sample; 32 (58%) contained text, 15 (27%) contained images, and 13 (24%) contained video. Content analysis revealed the following themes: \"community transmission\" relating to misinformation on how COVID-19 spreads in the community; \"prevention\" and \"treatment,\" including Ayurvedic and traditional remedies for how to prevent or treat COVID-19 infection; and messaging attempting to sell \"products or services\" to prevent or cure COVID-19. Messages varied in audience from the general public to South Asians specifically; the latter included messages alluding to South Asian pride and solidarity. Scientific jargon and references to major organizations and leaders in health care were included to provide credibility. Messages with a pleading tone encouraged users to forward them to friends or family.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Misinformation in the South Asian community on WhatsApp spreads erroneous ideas regarding disease transmission, prevention, and treatment. Content evoking solidarity, \"trustworthy\" sources, and encouragement to forward messages may increase the spread of misinformation. Public health outlets and social media companies must actively combat misinformation to address health disparities among the South Asian diaspora during the COVID-19","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e38607"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10013129/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9718446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Background: Social media has served as a lucrative platform for spreading misinformation and for promoting fraudulent products for the treatment, testing, and prevention of COVID-19. This has resulted in the issuance of many warning letters by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While social media continues to serve as the primary platform for the promotion of such fraudulent products, it also presents the opportunity to identify these products early by using effective social media mining methods.
Objective: Our objectives were to (1) create a data set of fraudulent COVID-19 products that can be used for future research and (2) propose a method using data from Twitter for automatically detecting heavily promoted COVID-19 products early.
Methods: We created a data set from FDA-issued warnings during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used natural language processing and time-series anomaly detection methods for automatically detecting fraudulent COVID-19 products early from Twitter. Our approach is based on the intuition that increases in the popularity of fraudulent products lead to corresponding anomalous increases in the volume of chatter regarding them. We compared the anomaly signal generation date for each product with the corresponding FDA letter issuance date. We also performed a brief manual analysis of chatter associated with 2 products to characterize their contents.
Results: FDA warning issue dates ranged from March 6, 2020, to June 22, 2021, and 44 key phrases representing fraudulent products were included. From 577,872,350 posts made between February 19 and December 31, 2020, which are all publicly available, our unsupervised approach detected 34 out of 44 (77.3%) signals about fraudulent products earlier than the FDA letter issuance dates, and an additional 6 (13.6%) within a week following the corresponding FDA letters. Content analysis revealed misinformation, information, political, and conspiracy theories to be prominent topics.
Conclusions: Our proposed method is simple, effective, easy to deploy, and does not require high-performance computing machinery unlike deep neural network-based methods. The method can be easily extended to other types of signal detection from social media data. The data set may be used for future research and the development of more advanced methods.
{"title":"The Early Detection of Fraudulent COVID-19 Products From Twitter Chatter: Data Set and Baseline Approach Using Anomaly Detection.","authors":"Abeed Sarker, Sahithi Lakamana, Ruqi Liao, Aamir Abbas, Yuan-Chi Yang, Mohammed Al-Garadi","doi":"10.2196/43694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/43694","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Social media has served as a lucrative platform for spreading misinformation and for promoting fraudulent products for the treatment, testing, and prevention of COVID-19. This has resulted in the issuance of many warning letters by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While social media continues to serve as the primary platform for the promotion of such fraudulent products, it also presents the opportunity to identify these products early by using effective social media mining methods.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>Our objectives were to (1) create a data set of fraudulent COVID-19 products that can be used for future research and (2) propose a method using data from Twitter for automatically detecting heavily promoted COVID-19 products early.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We created a data set from FDA-issued warnings during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used natural language processing and time-series anomaly detection methods for automatically detecting fraudulent COVID-19 products early from Twitter. Our approach is based on the intuition that increases in the popularity of fraudulent products lead to corresponding anomalous increases in the volume of chatter regarding them. We compared the anomaly signal generation date for each product with the corresponding FDA letter issuance date. We also performed a brief manual analysis of chatter associated with 2 products to characterize their contents.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>FDA warning issue dates ranged from March 6, 2020, to June 22, 2021, and 44 key phrases representing fraudulent products were included. From 577,872,350 posts made between February 19 and December 31, 2020, which are all publicly available, our unsupervised approach detected 34 out of 44 (77.3%) signals about fraudulent products earlier than the FDA letter issuance dates, and an additional 6 (13.6%) within a week following the corresponding FDA letters. Content analysis revealed <i>misinformation</i>, <i>information</i>, <i>political,</i> and <i>conspiracy theories</i> to be prominent topics.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our proposed method is simple, effective, easy to deploy, and does not require high-performance computing machinery unlike deep neural network-based methods. The method can be easily extended to other types of signal detection from social media data. The data set may be used for future research and the development of more advanced methods.</p>","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e43694"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10131818/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9733176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elisabeth Wilhelm, Isabella Ballalai, Marie-Eve Belanger, Peter Benjamin, Catherine Bertrand-Ferrandis, Supriya Bezbaruah, Sylvie Briand, Ian Brooks, Richard Bruns, Lucie M Bucci, Neville Calleja, Howard Chiou, Abhinav Devaria, Lorena Dini, Hyjel D'Souza, Adam G Dunn, Johannes C Eichstaedt, Silvia M A A Evers, Nina Gobat, Mika Gissler, Ian Christian Gonzales, Anatoliy Gruzd, Sarah Hess, Atsuyoshi Ishizumi, Oommen John, Ashish Joshi, Benjamin Kaluza, Nagwa Khamis, Monika Kosinska, Shibani Kulkarni, Dimitra Lingri, Ramona Ludolph, Tim Mackey, Stefan Mandić-Rajčević, Filippo Menczer, Vijaybabu Mudaliar, Shruti Murthy, Syed Nazakat, Tim Nguyen, Jennifer Nilsen, Elena Pallari, Natalia Pasternak Taschner, Elena Petelos, Mitchell J Prinstein, Jon Roozenbeek, Anton Schneider, Varadharajan Srinivasan, Aleksandar Stevanović, Brigitte Strahwald, Shabbir Syed Abdul, Sandra Varaidzo Machiri, Sander van der Linden, Christopher Voegeli, Claire Wardle, Odette Wegwarth, Becky K White, Estelle Willie, Brian Yau, Tina D Purnat
<p><strong>Background: </strong>An infodemic is excess information, including false or misleading information, that spreads in digital and physical environments during a public health emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an unprecedented global infodemic that has led to confusion about the benefits of medical and public health interventions, with substantial impact on risk-taking and health-seeking behaviors, eroding trust in health authorities and compromising the effectiveness of public health responses and policies. Standardized measures are needed to quantify the harmful impacts of the infodemic in a systematic and methodologically robust manner, as well as harmonizing highly divergent approaches currently explored for this purpose. This can serve as a foundation for a systematic, evidence-based approach to monitoring, identifying, and mitigating future infodemic harms in emergency preparedness and prevention.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>In this paper, we summarize the Fifth World Health Organization (WHO) Infodemic Management Conference structure, proceedings, outcomes, and proposed actions seeking to identify the interdisciplinary approaches and frameworks needed to enable the measurement of the burden of infodemics.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>An iterative human-centered design (HCD) approach and concept mapping were used to facilitate focused discussions and allow for the generation of actionable outcomes and recommendations. The discussions included 86 participants representing diverse scientific disciplines and health authorities from 28 countries across all WHO regions, along with observers from civil society and global public health-implementing partners. A thematic map capturing the concepts matching the key contributing factors to the public health burden of infodemics was used throughout the conference to frame and contextualize discussions. Five key areas for immediate action were identified.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The 5 key areas for the development of metrics to assess the burden of infodemics and associated interventions included (1) developing standardized definitions and ensuring the adoption thereof; (2) improving the map of concepts influencing the burden of infodemics; (3) conducting a review of evidence, tools, and data sources; (4) setting up a technical working group; and (5) addressing immediate priorities for postpandemic recovery and resilience building. The summary report consolidated group input toward a common vocabulary with standardized terms, concepts, study designs, measures, and tools to estimate the burden of infodemics and the effectiveness of infodemic management interventions.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Standardizing measurement is the basis for documenting the burden of infodemics on health systems and population health during emergencies. Investment is needed into the development of practical, affordable, evidence-based, and systematic methods that are leg
{"title":"Measuring the Burden of Infodemics: Summary of the Methods and Results of the Fifth WHO Infodemic Management Conference.","authors":"Elisabeth Wilhelm, Isabella Ballalai, Marie-Eve Belanger, Peter Benjamin, Catherine Bertrand-Ferrandis, Supriya Bezbaruah, Sylvie Briand, Ian Brooks, Richard Bruns, Lucie M Bucci, Neville Calleja, Howard Chiou, Abhinav Devaria, Lorena Dini, Hyjel D'Souza, Adam G Dunn, Johannes C Eichstaedt, Silvia M A A Evers, Nina Gobat, Mika Gissler, Ian Christian Gonzales, Anatoliy Gruzd, Sarah Hess, Atsuyoshi Ishizumi, Oommen John, Ashish Joshi, Benjamin Kaluza, Nagwa Khamis, Monika Kosinska, Shibani Kulkarni, Dimitra Lingri, Ramona Ludolph, Tim Mackey, Stefan Mandić-Rajčević, Filippo Menczer, Vijaybabu Mudaliar, Shruti Murthy, Syed Nazakat, Tim Nguyen, Jennifer Nilsen, Elena Pallari, Natalia Pasternak Taschner, Elena Petelos, Mitchell J Prinstein, Jon Roozenbeek, Anton Schneider, Varadharajan Srinivasan, Aleksandar Stevanović, Brigitte Strahwald, Shabbir Syed Abdul, Sandra Varaidzo Machiri, Sander van der Linden, Christopher Voegeli, Claire Wardle, Odette Wegwarth, Becky K White, Estelle Willie, Brian Yau, Tina D Purnat","doi":"10.2196/44207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/44207","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>An infodemic is excess information, including false or misleading information, that spreads in digital and physical environments during a public health emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an unprecedented global infodemic that has led to confusion about the benefits of medical and public health interventions, with substantial impact on risk-taking and health-seeking behaviors, eroding trust in health authorities and compromising the effectiveness of public health responses and policies. Standardized measures are needed to quantify the harmful impacts of the infodemic in a systematic and methodologically robust manner, as well as harmonizing highly divergent approaches currently explored for this purpose. This can serve as a foundation for a systematic, evidence-based approach to monitoring, identifying, and mitigating future infodemic harms in emergency preparedness and prevention.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>In this paper, we summarize the Fifth World Health Organization (WHO) Infodemic Management Conference structure, proceedings, outcomes, and proposed actions seeking to identify the interdisciplinary approaches and frameworks needed to enable the measurement of the burden of infodemics.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>An iterative human-centered design (HCD) approach and concept mapping were used to facilitate focused discussions and allow for the generation of actionable outcomes and recommendations. The discussions included 86 participants representing diverse scientific disciplines and health authorities from 28 countries across all WHO regions, along with observers from civil society and global public health-implementing partners. A thematic map capturing the concepts matching the key contributing factors to the public health burden of infodemics was used throughout the conference to frame and contextualize discussions. Five key areas for immediate action were identified.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The 5 key areas for the development of metrics to assess the burden of infodemics and associated interventions included (1) developing standardized definitions and ensuring the adoption thereof; (2) improving the map of concepts influencing the burden of infodemics; (3) conducting a review of evidence, tools, and data sources; (4) setting up a technical working group; and (5) addressing immediate priorities for postpandemic recovery and resilience building. The summary report consolidated group input toward a common vocabulary with standardized terms, concepts, study designs, measures, and tools to estimate the burden of infodemics and the effectiveness of infodemic management interventions.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Standardizing measurement is the basis for documenting the burden of infodemics on health systems and population health during emergencies. Investment is needed into the development of practical, affordable, evidence-based, and systematic methods that are leg","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e44207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9989916/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10138384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jason Turner, Mehmed Kantardzic, Rachel Vickers-Smith, Andrew G Brown
Background: COVID-19 has introduced yet another opportunity to web-based sellers of loosely regulated substances, such as cannabidiol (CBD), to promote sales under false pretenses of curing the disease. Therefore, it has become necessary to innovate ways to identify such instances of misinformation.
Objective: We sought to identify COVID-19 misinformation as it relates to the sales or promotion of CBD and used transformer-based language models to identify tweets semantically similar to quotes taken from known instances of misinformation. In this case, the known misinformation was the publicly available Warning Letters from Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Methods: We collected tweets using CBD- and COVID-19-related terms. Using a previously trained model, we extracted the tweets indicating commercialization and sales of CBD and annotated those containing COVID-19 misinformation according to the FDA definitions. We encoded the collection of tweets and misinformation quotes into sentence vectors and then calculated the cosine similarity between each quote and each tweet. This allowed us to establish a threshold to identify tweets that were making false claims regarding CBD and COVID-19 while minimizing the instances of false positives.
Results: We demonstrated that by using quotes taken from Warning Letters issued by FDA to perpetrators of similar misinformation, we can identify semantically similar tweets that also contain misinformation. This was accomplished by identifying a cosine distance threshold between the sentence vectors of the Warning Letters and tweets.
Conclusions: This research shows that commercial CBD or COVID-19 misinformation can potentially be identified and curbed using transformer-based language models and known prior instances of misinformation. Our approach functions without the need for labeled data, potentially reducing the time at which misinformation can be identified. Our approach shows promise in that it is easily adapted to identify other forms of misinformation related to loosely regulated substances.
{"title":"Detecting Tweets Containing Cannabidiol-Related COVID-19 Misinformation Using Transformer Language Models and Warning Letters From Food and Drug Administration: Content Analysis and Identification.","authors":"Jason Turner, Mehmed Kantardzic, Rachel Vickers-Smith, Andrew G Brown","doi":"10.2196/38390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/38390","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>COVID-19 has introduced yet another opportunity to web-based sellers of loosely regulated substances, such as cannabidiol (CBD), to promote sales under false pretenses of curing the disease. Therefore, it has become necessary to innovate ways to identify such instances of misinformation.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>We sought to identify COVID-19 misinformation as it relates to the sales or promotion of CBD and used transformer-based language models to identify tweets semantically similar to quotes taken from known instances of misinformation. In this case, the known misinformation was the publicly available Warning Letters from Food and Drug Administration (FDA).</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We collected tweets using CBD- and COVID-19-related terms. Using a previously trained model, we extracted the tweets indicating commercialization and sales of CBD and annotated those containing COVID-19 misinformation according to the FDA definitions. We encoded the collection of tweets and misinformation quotes into sentence vectors and then calculated the cosine similarity between each quote and each tweet. This allowed us to establish a threshold to identify tweets that were making false claims regarding CBD and COVID-19 while minimizing the instances of false positives.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We demonstrated that by using quotes taken from Warning Letters issued by FDA to perpetrators of similar misinformation, we can identify semantically similar tweets that also contain misinformation. This was accomplished by identifying a cosine distance threshold between the sentence vectors of the Warning Letters and tweets.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This research shows that commercial CBD or COVID-19 misinformation can potentially be identified and curbed using transformer-based language models and known prior instances of misinformation. Our approach functions without the need for labeled data, potentially reducing the time at which misinformation can be identified. Our approach shows promise in that it is easily adapted to identify other forms of misinformation related to loosely regulated substances.</p>","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e38390"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9941900/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10791904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Background: Social media plays a pivotal role in disseminating news globally and acts as a platform for people to express their opinions on various topics. A wide variety of views accompany COVID-19 vaccination drives across the globe, often colored by emotions that change along with rising cases, approval of vaccines, and multiple factors discussed online.
Objective: This study aims to analyze the temporal evolution of different emotions and the related influencing factors in tweets belonging to 5 countries with vital vaccine rollout programs, namely India, the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Methods: We extracted a corpus of nearly 1.8 million Twitter posts related to COVID-19 vaccination and created 2 classes of lexical categories-emotions and influencing factors. Using cosine distance from selected seed words' embeddings, we expanded the vocabulary of each category and tracked the longitudinal change in their strength from June 2020 to April 2021 in each country. Community detection algorithms were used to find modules in positive correlation networks.
Results: Our findings indicated the varying relationship among emotions and influencing factors across countries. Tweets expressing hesitancy toward vaccines represented the highest mentions of health-related effects in all countries, which reduced from 41% to 39% in India. We also observed a significant change (P<.001) in the linear trends of categories like hesitation and contentment before and after approval of vaccines. After the vaccine approval, 42% of tweets coming from India and 45% of tweets from the United States represented the "vaccine_rollout" category. Negative emotions like rage and sorrow gained the highest importance in the alluvial diagram and formed a significant module with all the influencing factors in April 2021, when India observed the second wave of COVID-19 cases.
Conclusions: By extracting and visualizing these tweets, we propose that such a framework may help guide the design of effective vaccine campaigns and be used by policy makers to model vaccine uptake and targeted interventions.
{"title":"Mining Trends of COVID-19 Vaccine Beliefs on Twitter With Lexical Embeddings: Longitudinal Observational Study.","authors":"Harshita Chopra, Aniket Vashishtha, Ridam Pal, Ananya Tyagi, Tavpritesh Sethi","doi":"10.2196/34315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/34315","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Social media plays a pivotal role in disseminating news globally and acts as a platform for people to express their opinions on various topics. A wide variety of views accompany COVID-19 vaccination drives across the globe, often colored by emotions that change along with rising cases, approval of vaccines, and multiple factors discussed online.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aims to analyze the temporal evolution of different emotions and the related influencing factors in tweets belonging to 5 countries with vital vaccine rollout programs, namely India, the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Australia.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We extracted a corpus of nearly 1.8 million Twitter posts related to COVID-19 vaccination and created 2 classes of lexical categories-emotions and influencing factors. Using cosine distance from selected seed words' embeddings, we expanded the vocabulary of each category and tracked the longitudinal change in their strength from June 2020 to April 2021 in each country. Community detection algorithms were used to find modules in positive correlation networks.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Our findings indicated the varying relationship among emotions and influencing factors across countries. Tweets expressing hesitancy toward vaccines represented the highest mentions of health-related effects in all countries, which reduced from 41% to 39% in India. We also observed a significant change (<i>P</i><.001) in the linear trends of categories like hesitation and contentment before and after approval of vaccines. After the vaccine approval, 42% of tweets coming from India and 45% of tweets from the United States represented the \"vaccine_rollout\" category. Negative emotions like rage and sorrow gained the highest importance in the alluvial diagram and formed a significant module with all the influencing factors in April 2021, when India observed the second wave of COVID-19 cases.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>By extracting and visualizing these tweets, we propose that such a framework may help guide the design of effective vaccine campaigns and be used by policy makers to model vaccine uptake and targeted interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e34315"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10165720/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9540500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zihe Zheng, Zidian Xie, Maciej Goniewicz, Irfan Rahman, Dongmei Li
Background: Socializing is one of the main motivations for water pipe smoking. Restrictions on social gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic might have influenced water pipe smokers' behaviors. As one of the most popular social media platforms, Reddit has been used to study public opinions and user experiences.
Objective: In this study, we aimed to examine the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on public perception and discussion of water pipe tobacco smoking using Reddit data.
Methods: We collected Reddit posts between December 1, 2018, and June 30, 2021, from a Reddit archive (PushShift) using keywords such as "waterpipe," "hookah," and "shisha." We examined the temporal trend in Reddit posts mentioning water pipes and different locations (such as homes and lounges or bars). The temporal trend was further tested using interrupted time series analysis. Sentiment analysis was performed to study the change in sentiment of water pipe-related posts before and during the pandemic. Topic modeling using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was used to examine major topics discussed in water pipe-related posts before and during the pandemic.
Results: A total of 45,765 nonpromotion water pipe-related Reddit posts were collected and used for data analysis. We found that the weekly number of Reddit posts mentioning water pipes significantly increased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (P<.001), and gradually decreased afterward (P<.001). In contrast, Reddit posts mentioning water pipes and lounges or bars showed an opposite trend. Compared to the period before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average number of Reddit posts mentioning lounges or bars was lower at the beginning of the pandemic but gradually increased afterward, while the average number of Reddit posts mentioning the word "home" remained similar during the COVID-19 pandemic (P=.29). While water pipe-related posts with a positive sentiment were dominant (12,526/21,182, 59.14% before the pandemic; 14,686/24,583, 59.74% after the pandemic), there was no change in the proportion of water pipe-related posts with different sentiments before and during the pandemic (P=.19, P=.26, and P=.65 for positive, negative, and neutral posts, respectively). Most topics related to water pipes on Reddit were similar before and during the pandemic. There were more discussions about the opening and closing of hookah lounges or bars during the pandemic.
Conclusions: This study provides a first evaluation of the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public perceptions of and discussions about water pipes on Reddit.
{"title":"Potential Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Public Perception of Water Pipes on Reddit: Observational Study.","authors":"Zihe Zheng, Zidian Xie, Maciej Goniewicz, Irfan Rahman, Dongmei Li","doi":"10.2196/40913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/40913","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Socializing is one of the main motivations for water pipe smoking. Restrictions on social gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic might have influenced water pipe smokers' behaviors. As one of the most popular social media platforms, Reddit has been used to study public opinions and user experiences.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>In this study, we aimed to examine the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on public perception and discussion of water pipe tobacco smoking using Reddit data.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We collected Reddit posts between December 1, 2018, and June 30, 2021, from a Reddit archive (PushShift) using keywords such as \"waterpipe,\" \"hookah,\" and \"shisha.\" We examined the temporal trend in Reddit posts mentioning water pipes and different locations (such as homes and lounges or bars). The temporal trend was further tested using interrupted time series analysis. Sentiment analysis was performed to study the change in sentiment of water pipe-related posts before and during the pandemic. Topic modeling using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was used to examine major topics discussed in water pipe-related posts before and during the pandemic.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 45,765 nonpromotion water pipe-related Reddit posts were collected and used for data analysis. We found that the weekly number of Reddit posts mentioning water pipes significantly increased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (<i>P</i><.001), and gradually decreased afterward (<i>P</i><.001). In contrast, Reddit posts mentioning water pipes and lounges or bars showed an opposite trend. Compared to the period before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average number of Reddit posts mentioning lounges or bars was lower at the beginning of the pandemic but gradually increased afterward, while the average number of Reddit posts mentioning the word \"home\" remained similar during the COVID-19 pandemic (<i>P</i>=.29). While water pipe-related posts with a positive sentiment were dominant (12,526/21,182, 59.14% before the pandemic; 14,686/24,583, 59.74% after the pandemic), there was no change in the proportion of water pipe-related posts with different sentiments before and during the pandemic (<i>P</i>=.19, <i>P</i>=.26, and <i>P</i>=.65 for positive, negative, and neutral posts, respectively). Most topics related to water pipes on Reddit were similar before and during the pandemic. There were more discussions about the opening and closing of hookah lounges or bars during the pandemic.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This study provides a first evaluation of the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public perceptions of and discussions about water pipes on Reddit.</p>","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e40913"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10126816/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9762508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wasim Ahmed, Josep Vidal-Alaball, Josep Maria Vilaseca Llobet
Background: Individuals from rural areas are increasingly using social media as a means of communication, receiving information, or actively complaining of inequalities and injustices.
Objective: The aim of our study is to analyze conversations about rural health taking place on Twitter during a particular phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: This study captured 57 days' worth of Twitter data related to rural health from June to August 2021, using English-language keywords. The study used social network analysis and natural language processing to analyze the data.
Results: It was found that Twitter served as a fruitful platform to raise awareness of problems faced by users living in rural areas. Overall, Twitter was used in rural areas to express complaints, debate, and share information.
Conclusions: Twitter could be leveraged as a powerful social listening tool for individuals and organizations that want to gain insight into popular narratives around rural health.
{"title":"Analyzing Discussions Around Rural Health on Twitter During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Data.","authors":"Wasim Ahmed, Josep Vidal-Alaball, Josep Maria Vilaseca Llobet","doi":"10.2196/39209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/39209","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Individuals from rural areas are increasingly using social media as a means of communication, receiving information, or actively complaining of inequalities and injustices.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>The aim of our study is to analyze conversations about rural health taking place on Twitter during a particular phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This study captured 57 days' worth of Twitter data related to rural health from June to August 2021, using English-language keywords. The study used social network analysis and natural language processing to analyze the data.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>It was found that Twitter served as a fruitful platform to raise awareness of problems faced by users living in rural areas. Overall, Twitter was used in rural areas to express complaints, debate, and share information.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Twitter could be leveraged as a powerful social listening tool for individuals and organizations that want to gain insight into popular narratives around rural health.</p>","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 ","pages":"e39209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10012181/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9151991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maria Josey, Dina Gaid, Lisa D. Bishop, Michael Blackwood, M. Najafizada, Jennifer R. Donnan
Background The public perception of driving under the influence of cannabis (DUIC) is not consistent with current evidence. The internet is an influential source of information available for people to find information about cannabis. Objective The purpose of this study was to assess the quality, readability, and accuracy of the information about DUIC found on the internet using the Google Canada search engine. Methods A quantitative content analysis of the top Google search web pages was conducted to analyze the information available to the public about DUIC. Google searches were performed using keywords, and the first 20 pages were selected. Web pages or web-based resources were eligible if they had text on cannabis and driving in English. We assessed (1) the quality of information using the Quality Evaluation Scoring Tool (QUEST) and the presence of the Health on the Net (HON) code; (2) the readability of information using the Gunning Fox Index (GFI), Flesch Reading Ease Scale (FRES), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) scores; and (3) the accuracy of information pertaining to the effects of cannabis consumption, prevalence of DUIC, DUIC effects on driving ability, risk of collision, and detection by law enforcement using an adapted version of the 5Cs website evaluation tool. Results A total of 82 web pages were included in the data analysis. The average QUEST score was 17.4 (SD 5.6) out of 28. The average readability scores were 9.7 (SD 2.3) for FKGL, 11.4 (SD 2.9) for GFI, 12.2 (SD 1.9) for SMOG index, and 49.9 (SD 12.3) for FRES. The readability scores demonstrated that 8 (9.8%) to 16 (19.5%) web pages were considered readable by the public. The accuracy results showed that of the web pages that presented information on each key topic, 96% (22/23) of them were accurate about the effects of cannabis consumption; 97% (30/31) were accurate about the prevalence of DUIC; 92% (49/53) were accurate about the DUIC effects on driving ability; 80% (41/51) were accurate about the risk of collision; and 71% (35/49) were accurate about detection by law enforcement. Conclusions Health organizations should consider health literacy of the public when creating content to help prevent misinterpretation and perpetuate prevailing misperceptions surrounding DUIC. Delivering high quality, readable, and accurate information in a way that is comprehensible to the public is needed to support informed decision-making.
{"title":"The Quality, Readability, and Accuracy of the Information on Google About Cannabis and Driving: Quantitative Content Analysis","authors":"Maria Josey, Dina Gaid, Lisa D. Bishop, Michael Blackwood, M. Najafizada, Jennifer R. Donnan","doi":"10.2196/43001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/43001","url":null,"abstract":"Background The public perception of driving under the influence of cannabis (DUIC) is not consistent with current evidence. The internet is an influential source of information available for people to find information about cannabis. Objective The purpose of this study was to assess the quality, readability, and accuracy of the information about DUIC found on the internet using the Google Canada search engine. Methods A quantitative content analysis of the top Google search web pages was conducted to analyze the information available to the public about DUIC. Google searches were performed using keywords, and the first 20 pages were selected. Web pages or web-based resources were eligible if they had text on cannabis and driving in English. We assessed (1) the quality of information using the Quality Evaluation Scoring Tool (QUEST) and the presence of the Health on the Net (HON) code; (2) the readability of information using the Gunning Fox Index (GFI), Flesch Reading Ease Scale (FRES), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) scores; and (3) the accuracy of information pertaining to the effects of cannabis consumption, prevalence of DUIC, DUIC effects on driving ability, risk of collision, and detection by law enforcement using an adapted version of the 5Cs website evaluation tool. Results A total of 82 web pages were included in the data analysis. The average QUEST score was 17.4 (SD 5.6) out of 28. The average readability scores were 9.7 (SD 2.3) for FKGL, 11.4 (SD 2.9) for GFI, 12.2 (SD 1.9) for SMOG index, and 49.9 (SD 12.3) for FRES. The readability scores demonstrated that 8 (9.8%) to 16 (19.5%) web pages were considered readable by the public. The accuracy results showed that of the web pages that presented information on each key topic, 96% (22/23) of them were accurate about the effects of cannabis consumption; 97% (30/31) were accurate about the prevalence of DUIC; 92% (49/53) were accurate about the DUIC effects on driving ability; 80% (41/51) were accurate about the risk of collision; and 71% (35/49) were accurate about detection by law enforcement. Conclusions Health organizations should consider health literacy of the public when creating content to help prevent misinterpretation and perpetuate prevailing misperceptions surrounding DUIC. Delivering high quality, readable, and accurate information in a way that is comprehensible to the public is needed to support informed decision-making.","PeriodicalId":73554,"journal":{"name":"JMIR infodemiology","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42778663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}