The experts' perspective of "ask-an-expert": An interview-based study of online nutrition and vaccination outreach

Media Literacy Practices to Prevent Obesity and Eating Disorders in Youth

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Obesity and eating disorders share common issues related to media use and effects, especially in the USA. Current research increasingly demonstrates that media literacy can address this problem. This narrative review highlights current media literacy-based research for obesity and eating disorder prevention among youth.

RECENT FINDINGS

Current research using media literacy techniques to prevent obesity indicates that these interventions improve nutrition outcomes, improve family communication about food, improve critical thinking about food advertisements, reduce sugar and fat intake, and reduce screen use for parents and youth. In addition, eating disorder research reveals that media literacy techniques lead to higher scores of body satisfaction and self-esteem, with lower scores of perfectionism, thinness, and ideal masculinity. There is a need for media literacy-based interventions to focus on family communication to prevent obesity and eating disorders. Furthermore, there should be more focus on identified levels of prevention and specific clinical outcomes.

Intention of health experts to counter health misinformation in social media: Effects of perceived threat to online users, correction efficacy, and self-affirmation

Our study analyzes the intention of Chinese health experts (health professionals and medical students) to correct health misinformation in social media. In an experimental 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design (n = 415), we manipulated the experts' perception of the threat that health misinformation poses for online users, their self-efficacy with respect to correcting misinformation, and their self-affirmation. To select the potential influence factors, we draw on self-affirmation theory and the extended parallel process model. Results of our experiment revealed that correction intention increases if experts perceive the threat for online users as severe, believe that they are capable of countering the impact of misinformation, and have a high motivation to maintain a positive self-image of caring for others. We discuss the consequences of our findings for motivating experts to help reduce the adverse effects of health misinformation in social media.

Everyday life information seeking in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic: daily topics of information needs in social Q&A

Purpose

This study investigated information needs on COVID-19 by identifying topics discussed on social questions and answers (Q&A) about daily routines, problems, and health issues for survival. A layered model of contexts for everyday life information seeking (ELIS) was adapted for interpreting topics to better understand the contexts in which users could relate information needs.

Design/methodology/approach

Questions and answers posted on Naver Knowledge-iN were collected and analyzed during the first nine months following the outbreak. Time distribution, topic modeling, and association rule mining were applied to examine the topics on COVID-19 and their temporal variation.

Findings

Numerous topics related to the cognitive context (symptoms and masks) and situational contexts (international affairs, financial support, study, and work) were discovered. Topics related to social context were discussed moderately, but the number of questions on this topic increased with time. Strong associations were observed between terms related to symptoms, indicating their importance as a COVID-19 topic in health.

Originality/value

This study investigated topics of information needs using social Q&A data in which not only information inquiry but also information sharing coexist. The findings can help bridge the theory of ELIS to topic modeling in practice. The insights gained from this study can be used by information service providers for developing guidance and programs about how to survive during a pandemic.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2021-0547.

Examining science communication on Reddit: From an "Assembled" to a "Disassembling" approach

This study examines science communication within Ask Me Anything sessions hosted by US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists on Reddit. In addition to considering a unique social media platform, our work makes an important contribution in revealing the limitations of a traditional approach to studying science communication and modeling an alternative. First, using an "assembled" approach, we qualitatively explore themes in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists' posts and consider how they reflect the goals of "deficit" and "dialogue" models. Second, using a "disassembling" approach, inspired by Davies and Horst and actor-network theory, we more deeply examine our experiences studying the Ask Me Anything sessions. We then demonstrate how this alternative approach identifies "hidden" human and non-human actants that may have shaped science communication as "mediators." We use these insights to reject the common assumption that science communication on social media occurs solely and directly between scientists and publics.

Vaccine information seeking on social Q&A services

Experts are concerned about the spread and recalcitrance of vaccine misinformation and its contribution to vaccine hesitancy. Despite this risk, little research attention has been paid to understanding how individuals seek vaccine information online and evaluate its trustworthiness. Here, we hypothesized that when vaccine-hesitant parents seek information about vaccines, they prefer trustworthy sources based on their competence, integrity and benevolence. We explored this issue using 4910 questions and 2583 answers retrieved from two social question-and-answer (Q&A) platforms: "Yahoo! Answers" and the Facebook group "Talking about Vaccines." We examined what kinds of questions are asked about vaccines, to what extent they are explicitly directed at health professionals or parents, and what features of the answers predict perceived answer quality, based on the theory of epistemic trust. The findings indicate that on different platforms, vaccine-related questions focus on different topics; namely, questions on one platform focused on the risks and benefits of vaccination, whereas they dealt with vaccine schedules on the other. On both platforms, most questions did not specify that an answer should be based on professional expertise or parents' experience. Both pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine answers were proportionately represented among the "best answers". However, if an answer was written by a health professional, the askers and the community on "Yahoo! Answers" were twice as likely to choose it as the "best answer" to a vaccine-related question, irrespective of whether it encouraged or discouraged vaccination. By contrast, an online experiment revealed that both the identity of the respondent and the stance towards vaccination affected the perceived trustworthiness of the answers. These findings indicate that despite the proliferation of anti-vaccine messages, epistemic trust in mainstream science and medicine is robust. User responses to expert answers suggest that expert outreach in online environments may be an effective intervention to address vaccine hesitancy.