Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 15, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 15, 2022 - Jun 10, 2022
Date Accepted: Jul 12, 2024
(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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Prevalence of Health Misinformation on Social Media: Challenges and Mitigation before, during and beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic
ABSTRACT
We consider the prevalence of misinformation online before and during the Covid 19 pandemic and the effect that has on health practitioners’ practice. The pressures and distractions that health professionals face in attempting to mitigate the impacts of this misinformation are discussed. By reviewing the available literature, we are able to draw conclusions regarding the impact on both health professionals' and patients' understanding of health information, especially in under represented communities, during and before the pandemic. The aim is to illustrate the impact of online social media in introducing additional sources of misinformation that impact health practitioners' ability to communicate effectively with their patients. In addition, the level of knowledge held by practitioners in order to mitigate the effect of misinformation is considered as well as the additional stress factors associated with dealing with the outbreak, which in turn affect communication with patients.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.