Addressing Health-Related Misinformation on Social Media

Abstract

The ubiquitous social media landscape has created an information ecosystem populated by a cacophony of opinion, true and false information, and an unprecedented quantity of data on many topics. Policy makers and the social media industry grapple with the challenge of curbing fake news, disinformation, and hate speech; and the field of medicine is similarly confronted with the spread of false, inaccurate, or incomplete health information.1 From the discourse on the latest tobacco products, alcohol, and alternative therapies to skepticism about medical guidelines, misinformation on social media can have adverse effects on public health. For example, the social media rumors circulating during the Ebola outbreak in 2014 created hostility toward health workers, posing challenges to efforts to control the epidemic.2 Another example is the increasingly prevalent antivaccine social media posts that seemingly legitimize debate about vaccine safety and could be contributing to reductions in vaccination rates and increases in vaccine-preventable disease.3 The spread of health-related misinformation is exacerbated by information silos and echo chamber effects. Social media feeds are personally curated and tailored to individual beliefs, partisan bias, and identity. Consequently, information silos are created in which the likelihood for exchange of differing viewpoints