Assessing the Credibility and Authenticity of Social Media Content for Applications in Health Communication: Scoping Review (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Nutrition science is currently facing issues regarding the public’s perception of their credibility, with Social Media Influencers increasingly becoming key sources of nutrition-related information with high engagement rates. Source credibility, and to an extent, authenticity, have been widely studied in marketing and communications, but have not yet been considered in the context of nutrition or health communication. Thus investigation into the factors that impact perceived source and message credibility and authenticity is of interest to inform health communication on social media. OBJECTIVE To explore the factors that impact message and source credibility (which includes trustworthiness and expertise) or authenticity judgements on social media platforms, to better inform nutrition science social media communication best practice. METHODS Six databases across a variety of disciplines were searched during March 2019. Inclusion criteria were experimental studies, studies focusing on microblogs, healthy adult populations, and studies focusing on either source credibility or authenticity. Exclusion criteria were studies of those under 18 years old, clinical populations, grey literature, blogs, WeChat, online reviews, non-English papers, or those not involving participants’ perceptions. RESULTS Overall 22 eligible papers were included, giving a total of 25 research studies. Among these studies, Facebook and Twitter were the most common social media platforms investigated. The most effective communication style differed depending on the social media platform. Factors reported to impact credibility included: language used online, expertise heuristics, and bandwagon heuristics. No papers were found that assessed authenticity. CONCLUSIONS Credibility and authenticity are important concepts studied extensively in the marketing and communications disciplines, however, further research is required in a health context. Instagram is a less-researched platform in comparison to Facebook and Twitter. CLINICALTRIAL

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“…We await the application of these techniques to other areas in regard to stemming the proliferation of misinformation. Our previous research has identified many factors that may impact the trustworthiness and authenticity of such posts such as number of followers, message appeal, and authority cues [ 28 ]. However, there is a paucity of research on the influence of either NPs or SMIs on perceived trustworthiness and authenticity of SM posts [ 28 ].…”

“…Originally, the questionnaire had a broad scope and included questions relating to communication objectives, SM behaviour, and physical activity. However, based on the findings of our scoping review [ 28 ] these analyses focus only on the results relating to trustworthiness, authenticity, and message appeals [ 16 , 37 , 38 ].…”

“…Our scoping review has highlighted the paucity of research from health and nutrition science that considers the trustworthiness or authenticity of a spokesperson’s communications [ 28 ]. The aim of this paper was to understand the differences in consumer’s perceptions of NPs and SMIs on Instagram through exploring authenticity and trustworthiness.…”