Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 23, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 23, 2022 - Mar 7, 2022
Date Accepted: Apr 14, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Characterization of misleading fluoride information on Instagram: An infodemiological study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digital oral health misleading information has been propagated on social media to deceive people about fluoride's economic and health benefits to prevent dental caries.
Objective:
This study aimed to characterize the misleading fluoride-related information on Instagram.
Methods:
3,863 posts ranked by users' total interaction and published between August 2016 and August 2021 were retrieved by CrowdTangleTM, of which 641 were screened to obtain 500 final posts. Afterward, two independent investigators analyzed posts qualitatively to define their authors' interests, profile characteristics, content type, and sentiment. Also, LDA topic modeling was applied to find salient terms and topics related to false content, calculating their similarity through an intertopic distance map. Data were evaluated by descriptive analysis, Mann-Whitney U test, Cramer’s V test, and multiple logistic regression models.
Results:
Most posts were categorized as misinformation and political-misinformation. The engagement of users was mainly associated with older messages (p<0.001; OR = 3.293) and professional-/political-misinformation (p=0.048; OR = 1.944). In this context, time from publication, negative/neutral sentiment, author’s profile linked to business/dental office/news agency, and social and political interests were related to the increment of the interaction performance of messages. While political-misinformation with negative/neutral sentiments was usually published by regular users, misinformation was linked to positive commercial posts. Overall messages focused on improving oral health habits, side effects, dentifrice-containing natural ingredients, and fluoride-free products propaganda.
Conclusions:
Misleading fluoride-related posts on Instagram were predominantly produced by laypeople motivated by social, psychological, and/or financial interests. However, higher engagement metrics were associated with political-misinformation. Most posts were related to the toxicity of fluoridated water and products frequently motivated by financial interests.
Citation
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Copyright
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