The Role of the Internet in the Spread of Inaccurate Health Information
“https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/how-misinfodemics-spread-disease/568921/
With the overwhelming and ever-growing popularity of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, it is no surprise that information spreads at a rapid pace. However, the sharing of information has started to lead to unforeseen consequences. One area of concern is the spread of misinformation relating to human health and medicine. Large platforms have seen the emergence of bots sharing positive information on e-cigs, authors publishing erroneous papers on the dangers of vaccinations, and evidence that Ebola rumors made the disease spread faster. As pertaining to vaccines, the false information has led to a decrease in the general public’s confidence that vaccines are helpful. Despite originating as an online piece, this information has led to outbreaks of diseases like the measles in the developed world, something easily preventable with a mere vaccination. All of the rumors can be traced back to one incorrect paper that was published under a fraudulent lab. This falls under the phenomena “misinfodemics”, which refers to the spread of disease as the result of incorrect information on the internet. Like the 2016 election, Russian bots are a large contributor of wrong health information. George Washington University even found that these bots were twenty-two times more likely to tweet about vaccines than the average user. To combat the misinformation problem, the best solution is to generate more and more accurate information about diseases, prevention, and other health problems. Doctors and healthcare professionals have taken to social media platforms to raise awareness about their specific causes. Media has allowed information, whether right or wrong, to have an audience on their platforms. This heightened content exposure has not just altered the thoughts of viewers but has elevated into real issues affecting the way people act and the things they do.
While there is undoubtedly an information network that is contributing to the ways and how many people are seeing inaccurate material, it is hard to gauge how large the network is or how it may contribute to the spread of future diseases. However, these large networks can act as dangerous channels in the share of misinformation. Homophily, the concept that we tend to be similar to our friends, takes a large part in this reasoning. In one’s ego network, they tend to have similarities with their friends, whether that be age, geographical location, field of work, or a shared hobby. The more ties two people share, the more likely they are to connect and trust each other. These strong connections between people lead to more connections between their mutual friends, leading to more of their friends building connections themselves. Since people are more likely to believe articles shared by one of their friends, if one person is tricked into believing the misinformation on a particular health issue, they might possibly like or share an article containing false information. This means that their friends have a higher likelihood of seeing and trusting that information, expanding the portion of the network buying into the false information. Eventually, this can lead to a large minority population convinced that they’re beliefs are accurate. For example, many people who don’t believe in vaccinations cannot be convinced that those vaccines do not cause autism, even though the sole study stating these findings was debunked. Misinformation about general health and diseases can lead to severe consequences when people start to trust the information spread through social media platforms more than their doctors or other experts in the field. The more expansive person social media becomes, the more rapidly these rumors and bots can reach unassuming users, forever changing the way health information is related to the public.