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The science on controversial topics is often heatedly discussed on social media, a potential problem for social-media-based science communicators. Therefore, two exploratory studies were performed to investigate the effects of science-critical user comments attacking Facebook posts containing scientific claims. The claims were about one of four con...
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... regard to comment agreement, introducing the interaction terms into the mixed-effects model again significantly increased the model fit (see Table 1). Looking at the comment agreement marginal means per comment and topic (see Figure 4), we again see that agreement with the complexity comment is rather high and agreement with the incompetence comment is rather low. Again, agreement with the motivations comment is more dependent on the topic. ...
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According to an international study3, alternative medicine has grown
significantly in popularity over the past 30 years in most Western countries. The Covid-19 pandemic and the realities associated with it have
meant that the use of non-medical practices has increased significantly. The timing of the Covid-19 pandemic compounded people’s negative...
Citations
... 91,92 This is likely going to increase the amount of time allocated and needed to dispel these challenges. 93,94 Politicians and other public figures have also played a significant role in shaping public perceptions and responses to the pandemic and science more broadly; promoting unproven treatments or remedies for COVID-19, such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting their use. 95,96 This has also led to an alarming decline in vaccine uptake that could result in outbreaks of diseases such as measles, with such outbreaks thought to be almost unheard-of pre-pandemic. ...
... 108 This unique set of circumstances bringing mis-and disinformation is likely going to increase in the amount of time allocated and needed to dispel these challenges. 93,94 ...
Anatomy has been integral to medical and health education for centuries, it has also had a significant role in wider public life, as an educational resource, a link to their health, and also as a darker deterrent. Historically, public engagement in anatomy is hallmarked by public dissections of convicted criminals across the globe. Artists, specifically non‐medical men, such as Leonardo da Vinci, are reported to have participated in public dissection. Dissection would later rekindle public interest in anatomy as graverobbing led to the reform and regulation of anatomy in many countries. In recent years, there has been growing interest from the public in learning more about their bodies as health and well‐being become of paramount importance, particularly following the COVID‐19 pandemic. Anatomy sits in a prime position to direct and instigate conversations around health, well‐being, and body image. Every human on earth possesses a perfect resource to look at and learn about. Models, art‐based anatomical activities, and crafts provide active learning opportunities for the wider public around anatomy. Most recently, apps, games, and extended reality provide novel and insightful learning opportunities for the public relating to the body. Finally, training and resources must also be made available from institutions and professional bodies to anatomists to enable them to deliver engagement in an already congested and educationally heavy schedule. This resurgence of interest in anatomical public engagement sees anatomy re‐enter the public spotlight, with more appropriate resources and educational settings to offer engagement with the aim of benefiting the public.
... Considering the increasing trend of people using the internet for health-related information, including medicines, products, and CAMs [120][121][122], people tend to perceive unlicensed, non-professional SMIs as credible as licensed healthcare professionals when seeking health-related information [123]. Information provided by SMIs with no education about healthcare can jeopardize the health of those who follow them on social media. ...
Background
Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are a fashionable way of marketing products by creating electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) on social media. The marketing of complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) by SMIs is becoming increasingly popular and gaining credibility within consumers on social media platforms. Nonetheless, advising about healthcare products on social media should be examined as it is different from endorsing other kinds of commercial products. The aim of this study is to develop a model that provides the underlying mechanisms of the stimuli of SMIs on social media towards consumers’ purchase intention of CAMs.
Methods
This study used best fit framework synthesis methods to develop the model. A priori theory selection was conducted by identifying a BeHEMoTh strategy (Behavior of Interest, Health context, Exclusions and Models or Theories) to systematically approach identifying relevant models and theories relative to the research aim. Further evidence derived from primary research studies that describe the behavior identified is coded against selected a priori theory to develop the model.
Results
This study presents a novel model for understanding the purchase behavior of CAMs using SMIs as a marketing strategy. The model included two well-known theories (theory of planned behaviour theory and source credibility theory) as well as extensive existing research from a multidisciplinary perspective. The model is exclusively designed to help identify elements affecting perceived source credibility and factors that have an influence over consumers’ preferences to purchase CAMs by taking into consideration SMIs’ endorsements.
Conclusions
This study provides unique insights introducing new research areas to health literature and offers, new roles for healthcare professionals in this digital era by gaining new skills and competencies required to provide more credible and accurate information about CAMs. The study also highlights the new marketing era of online health-related product endorsements and recommends that policymakers and researchers carefully evaluate the impact of SMI’s on the use of CAMs, as well as to regulate the content of these promotional materials.
... According to Walton (1998), bias ad hominems not only call into question a target's impartiality, but also attack the sincerity of the target's participation in the collaborative dialogue. This supports the observations made by Gierth and Bromme (2020), who found that online comments attacking the motivations of scientists were effective in lowering scientists' perceived integrity. ...
... The certainty with which contradictory information is amplified by non-institutional actors can contribute to increasing the framework of uncertainty surrounding the consensus among scientists. As other research has shown, the lower the consensus among scientists, the lower the trust the lay public has in science (Gustafson & Rice, 2019;Mihelj et al., 2022); the lay public's attacks on scientists through social media can hurt the perceived integrity of experts as demonstrated in the experiment of Gierth and Bromme (2020) on Facebook users' comments about scientifically controversial topics. ...
The COVID-19 emergency underlined the importance of an effective public health communication to limit the spread of the outbreak. Physicians as "public experts" can play a crucial part in health risk communication, even if their role is challenged by transformations into the information system. Therefore, the major objective of this study was to investigate public perception of medical experts' opinions regarding the COVID-19 emergency. The Italian public debate involving medical experts in the Twitter sphere during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has particularly been examined. A content analysis was performed on 2,040 randomly selected tweets. The results of content analysis show that the medical experts who tend to mitigate the risk received a higher number of tweets supporting their positions when compared to the experts whose statements were aimed at intensifying the risk. Since a public expert is a communicator, but also an advisor who can affect how laypersons perceive and react to risk events, this study can provide more knowledge about the public perception of different communication strategies incorporated by medical experts.
... As the new possibilities of online participation and news production have provoked a kind of "hyperaccessibility of expertise" (Brubaker, 2021, p. 75), scientific knowledge is no longer accepted automatically, and researchers' authority is no longer unquestionable (Ehlers & Zachmann, 2019, p. 9;Marres, 2018, p. 423). Moreover, scientific knowledge must compete with "alternative facts," which question the credibility and persuasiveness of scientific arguments and epistemic authorities (Gierth & Bromme, 2020;Neuberger et al., 2019, p. 167). Furthermore, science communication in legacy media needs to handle the new rhetorical strategies of science deniers, such as singling out highly specific data points out of all available data while ignoring others ("cherry-picking" evidence) or inventing "fake experts" (see Betsch et al., 2019;Lewandowsky et al., 2022;. ...
The Covid‐19 pandemic has been accompanied by an excess of accurate and inaccurate information (infodemic) that has
prevented people from finding reliable guidance in decision‐making. Non‐professional but popular science communicators
—some with a political agenda—supply the public with scientific knowledge regarding Covid‐19. This kind of communication
represents a worrisome force in societal discourses on science‐related political issues. This article explores online content
(N = 108 articles) of two popular German “alternative news” media (NachDenkSeiten and PI News) that present and
evaluate biomedical research concerning Covid‐19. Using thematic analysis, we investigated how scientific evidence was
presented and questioned. Regarding the theoretical background, we drew on the concept of “evidencing practices” and
ideas from argumentation theory. More specifically, we studied the use of the following three evidencing and counterevidencing
practices: references to Data/Methods, references to Experts/Authorities, and Narratives. The results indicate that
the studied alternative news media generally purport to report on science using the same argumentation mechanisms as
those employed in science journalism in legacy media. However, a deeper analysis reveals that argumentation directions
mostly follow preexisting ideologies and political agendas against Covid‐19 policies, which leads to science coverage that
contradicts common epistemic authorities and evidence. Finally, we discuss the possible implications of our findings for
audience views and consider strategies for countering the rejection of scientific evidence.
... Only a few previous studies have found statistically significant links between prior beliefs or attitudes and source trustworthiness judgments (e.g., van Strien et al., 2016). For example, Gierth and Bromme (2020) investigated how the content of critical user comments attacking scientific claims and sources on social media affect the perceived trustworthiness of the attacked source and the credibility of the attacked claim. They found that the content of critical user comments influences the credibility of scientific claims if the commenters were introduced as experts, and that prior attitude was the strongest predictor of comment agreement, claim agreement, claim credibility, and source trustworthiness. ...
The present article is a theoretical review on source evaluation. We define source evaluation, also called sourcing, as attending to, evaluating, and using available or accessible information about
the sources of textual content. The main objectives of this article are (1) to propose a new model of the socio-cognitive impact of sourcing; (2) to examine what influences sourcing; (3) to
investigate the link between sourcing and source memory; and (4) the relation between sourcing and critical thinking. We will also discuss implications for future research in this area.
... Aber auch jenseits solch breiter Zeitdiagnosen werden soziale Medien zunehmend als Herausforderung für die Kommunikation glaubwürdigen Wissens begriffen (acatech, 2017;Gierth & Bromme, 2020;Könneker, 2020;Weingart & Guenther, 2016) da sie einen Raum zur Kommunikation unautorisierter Beobachtungen bieten (Brüggemann, Lörcher & Walter, 2020, S. 8) oder sogar ganz grundsätzlich verunklaren, wer überhaupt im Namen der Wissenschaft sprechen darf (Wenninger, 2019). Auch neuere Studien, die spezifisch auf die pandemische Situation abzielen, bestätigen einerseits die wichtige Rolle sozialer Medien als Vermittlungsinstanz pandemiebezogener Informationen, weisen aber andererseits darauf hin, dass gerade zu COVID-19 Desinformationen und Verschwörungstheorien florieren. ...
Soziale Medien stellen wichtige Bühnen für zeitgenössische Konflikte um Wissen und Wahrheit dar. Der Artikel widmet sich vor diesem Hintergrund dem Gebrauch des Hashtags #selberdenken auf Twitter. Mittels einer quantitativen Datenanalyse wird zunächst die Konjunktur der Verwendung des Hashtags nachgezeichnet. Eine anschließende hermeneutische Sequenzanalyse zeigt, wie in seinem Gebrauch ein Anspruch auf epistemische Autonomie zum Ausdruck gebracht wird: Allein die eigenen Erfahrungen, Interpretationen und Quellen gelten als vertrauenswürdig. Dies korrespondiert mit einem grundlegenden Misstrauen in die von den Massenmedien konstruierten Realitäten und einer Trivialisierung von Erkenntnisprozessen. Die Untersuchung leistet einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der kommunikativen Mikrostrukturen mediatisierter Wissenskonflikte und der Rolle, die ein öffentlich kommunizierter Skeptizismus in ihnen spielt.
... Prior experiences & attitudes. People's prior experiences with and attitudes towards the trustee influence their perceptions of that trustee and have been shown to be essential antecedents of trust in information found on social media [5,31,32,40,122]. For example, Baxter et al. found that participants drew on personal experiences when determining the reliability of information found on social media [5]. ...
... Additionally, the content and writing styles of information online are commonly-examined factors that influence trust. This can include the specific topics that are written about (e.g., informational vs. entertaining information; health vs. political topics) [17,31,56,77,122] and how these topics are introduced and discussed (e.g., wording) [25,40,56,95]. Furthermore, the level of detail of the content also influences people's trust in information. ...
Do people trust social media? If so, why, in what contexts, and how does that trust impact their lives? Researchers, companies, and journalists alike have increasingly investigated these questions, which are fundamental to understanding social media interactions and their implications for society. However, trust in social media is a complex concept, and there is conflicting evidence about the antecedents and implications of trusting social media content, users, and platforms. More problematic is that we lack basic agreement as to what trust means in the context of social media. Addressing these challenges, we conducted a systematic review to identify themes and challenges in this field. Through our analysis of 70 papers, we contribute a synthesis of how trust in social media is defined, conceptualized, and measured, a summary of trust antecedents in social media, an understanding of how trust in social media impacts behaviors and attitudes, and directions for future work.
... Gierth et al. 2020 [47] Prior judgements affect how the following are judged: user comments, the attacked claims, and the claim's source. After adjusting for attitude, people agree more with thematic complexity statements, but only when the comments are made by experts do the comments have a differing impact on perceived argument credibility. ...
... Additionally, information that is potentially dangerous can be shared on social media and without being reviewed by regulatory and monitoring systems [56]. However, studies suggest that not all information about CAM on social media, whether factual or inaccurate, is equally trusted by social media users [47]. For example, for naturopathic physicians, citing research articles in their blogs has been suggested as a valuable tool to build credibility both for them individually and for their discipline as a whole [71]. ...
... For example, for naturopathic physicians, citing research articles in their blogs has been suggested as a valuable tool to build credibility both for them individually and for their discipline as a whole [71]. Additionally, one study's researchers showed their participants Facebook posts about research which found that homeopathy leads to health risks [47]. This study found that if comments criticize the intentions of the researchers rather than their expertise, they are more likely to effectively reduce perceived credibility of these Facebook posts [47]. ...
Background
Despite the increased use of social media to share health-related information and the substantial impact that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) can have on individuals’ health and wellbeing, currently, to our knowledge, there is no review that compiles research on how social media is used in the context of CAM. The objective of this study was to summarize what are the ways in which social media is used in the context of CAM.
Methods
A scoping review was conducted, following Arksey and O’Malley’s five-stage methodological framework. MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, AMED, and CINAHL databases were systematically searched from inception until October 3, 2020, in addition to the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health (CADTH) website. Eligible studies had to have investigated how at least one social media platform is used in the context of a single or multiple types of CAM treatments.
Results
Searches retrieved 1714 items following deduplication, of which 1687 titles and abstracts were eliminated, leaving 94 full-text articles to be considered. Of those, 65 were not eligible, leaving a total of 29 articles eligible for review. Three themes emerged from our analysis: 1) social media is used to share user/practitioner beliefs, attitudes, and experiences about CAM, 2) social media acts as a vehicle for the spread of misinformation about CAM, and 3) there are unique challenges with social media research in the context of CAM.
Conclusions
In addition to social media being a useful tool to share user/practitioner beliefs, attitudes, and experiences about CAM, it has shown to be accessible, effective, and a viable option in delivering CAM therapies and information. Social media has also been shown to spread a large amount of misleading and false information in the context of CAM. Additionally, this review highlights the challenges with conducting social media research in the context of CAM, particularly in collecting a representative sample.
... As science attitudes research has traditionally been investigated via large-scale surveys (Bauer and Falade, 2014) and experimental designs (e.g. Gierth and Bromme, 2020), a corpus-driven approach and a wealth of online science communication offer an additional method for tapping into attitudes unsolicited by the researcher. ...
The public understanding of science has produced a large body of research about general attitudes toward science. However, most studies of science attitudes have been carried out via surveys or in experimental conditions, and few make use of the growing contexts of online science communication to investigate attitudes without researcher intervention. This study adopted corpus-based discourse analysis to investigate the negative attitudes held toward science by users of the social media website Reddit, specifically the forum r/science. A large corpus of comments made to r/science was collected and mined for keywords. Analysis of keywords identified several sources of negative attitudes, such as claims that scientists can be corruptible, poor communicators, and misleading. Research methodologies were negatively evaluated on the basis of small sample sizes. Other commenters negatively evaluated social science research, especially psychology, as being pseudoscientific, and several commenters described science journalism as untrustworthy or sensationalized.
