BackgroundThe Internet is one of the primary sources for health information. However, in research, the effects of Internet use on the perception of one’s own health have not received much attention so far.ObjectiveThis study tested how Internet use for acquiring health information and severity of illness influence patients with a chronic disease with regard to the perception of their own health. Negative psychological states are known to lead to preferential processing of positive information. In particular, the self-directed nature of Internet use provides room for such biases. Therefore, we predicted that patients experiencing negative health states more frequently, due to more frequent episodes of a chronic illness, will gain a more positive perception of their health if they use the Internet frequently to gain health information, but not if they use the Internet rarely. This effect was not expected for other sources of information.MethodsA longitudinal questionnaire study with two measurement points—with a 7-month time lag—tested the hypothesis in a sample of patients with chronic inflammatory bowel disease (n=208). This study assessed patients’ frequency of Internet use, their participation in online social support groups, their use of other sources of health information, and several indicators of the participants’ perceptions of their own health. A structure equation model (SEM) was used to test the predictions separately for Internet searches and other sources of information.ResultsData analysis supported the prediction; the interaction between frequency of health-related information searches and frequency of episodes at the first measurement point (T1) was related to participants’ positive perceptions of their own health at the second measurement point (T2) (B=.10, SE=.04, P=.02) above and beyond the perceptions of their own health at T1. When participants used the Internet relatively rarely (-1 SD), there was no relationship between frequency of episodes and positive perceptions of their own health (B=-.11, SE=.14, t 203=-0.82, P=.41). In contrast, when participants used the Internet relatively often (+1 SD), the more frequently they had those episodes the more positive were the perceptions of their own health (B=.36, SE=.15, t 203=2.43, P=.02). Additional SEM analyses revealed that this effect occurs exclusively when information is searched for on the Internet, but not when other sources of information are consulted, nor when online social support groups are joined.ConclusionsThe results of this study suggest that patients might process information from the Internet selectively, in an unbalanced, biased fashion, with the formation of a self-serving (ie, positive) perception of own health. At the same time, this bias contributes to the ability of patients to cope psychologically with their disease.

Wikipedia emphasizes the objectivity of content. Yet, Wikipedia articles also deal with negative events that potentially elicit intense emotions. Undesirable outcomes (e.g., earthquakes) are known to elicit sadness, while undesirable outcomes caused by others' actions (e.g., terrorist attacks) are known to elicit anger. Internet users' emotional responses are likely to end up in Wikipedia articles on those events as characteristics of Internet users spill over to Wikipedia articles. Therefore, we expected that Wikipedia articles on terrorist attacks contain more anger-related and less sadness-related content than articles on earthquakes. We analyzed newly created Wikipedia articles about the two events (Study 1) as well as more current versions of those Wikipedia articles after the events had already happened (Study 2). The results supported our expectations. Surprisingly, Wikipedia articles on those two events contained more emotional content than related Wikipedia talk pages (Study 3). We discuss the implications for Wikipedia and future research.

In order to deal with the current, dramatic decline in biodiversity, the public at large needs to be aware of and participate in biodiversity research activities. One way to do this is citizen science projects, in which researchers collaborate with volunteering citizens in scientific research. However, it remains unclear whether engaging in such projects has an impact on the learning outcomes of volunteers. Previous research has so far presented mixed results on the improvement of citizens' attitudes and knowledge, mostly because such research has focused only on single aspects of citizen science projects in case studies. To address these limitations, we investigated the impact of an urban bat ecology project on citizens' attitudes and knowledge about bats, and on their engagement with citizen science. We also examined whether the degree of citizen participation (i.e., collecting data vs. collecting and analyzing data) had an influence on the outcomes. We conducted four field studies and used a survey-based, experimental, pre-/post-measurement design. To vary the degree of participation, we assessed the post measurement in one group directly after data collection, whereas, in a second group, we assessed it after data collection and analysis, at the end of the project. Across all studies, the results demonstrated that citizens' content knowledge of urban bat ecology increased, and their attitudes toward bats and toward their engagement in citizen science improved during their participation. Citizens' degrees of participation did not influence these outcomes. Thus, our research illustrates that citizen science can increase awareness of urban bat conservation, independently of citizens' degree of participation. We discuss the implications of our findings for the citizen science community.

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