Health Literacy and Critical Lecture as Key Elements to Detect and Reply to Nutrition Misinformation on Social Media: Analysis between Spanish Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

Health misinformation about nutrition and other health aspects on social media is a current public health concern. Healthcare professionals play an essential role in efforts to detect and correct it. The present study focuses on analyzing the use of competencies associated with training in methodology, health literacy, and critical lecture in order to detect sources of health misinformation that use scientific articles to support their false information. A qualitative study was conducted between 15 and 30 January 2022, wherein the participants were recruited from active users from a nutrition conversation on Twitter, diets, and cancer and defined themselves as healthcare professionals. This study demonstrates that health literacy and critical lecture competencies allow for the detection of more misinformation messages and are associated with a high rate of responses to users that spread the misinformation messages. Finally, this study proposes the necessity of developing actions to improve health literacy and critical lecture competencies between healthcare professionals. However, in order to achieve this, health authorities must develop strategies to psychologically support those healthcare professionals faced with bullying as a result of their activity on social media debunking health hoaxes.

Literacia em saúde da pessoa internada em serviço de cirurgia oncológica

“…Também Liu et al (2020) se refere à LS como a capacidade de um indivíduo obter e traduzir conhecimentos e informações a fim de manter e melhorar a saúde de uma forma adequada ao contexto. A definição e operacionalização da LS é fundamental para se definirem intervenções eficazes (Holden et al, 2021;Mor-Anavy et al, 2021;Segado-Fernández et al, 2023). Para avaliar o conceito de LS, Sørensen et al (2015) criaram o instrumento European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU).…”

Social networks use in the context of Schizophrenia: a review of the literature

“…Nowadays some social networks are playing an increasingly important role in the search for health information (14,17), especially among young (18) and young adults (18-24 years of age), who use them very frequently and spend considerable time in platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or TikTok (18)(19)(20).…”

“…However, the main drawback commonly described for health information disseminated through social networks is the lack of quality and reliability (20,21). Individuals may be vulnerable to unreliable content and may not have adequate tools to successfully filter reliable information from untrue content (4).…”

Realfood and Cancer: Analysis of the Reliability and Quality of YouTube Content

“…But it is necessary not to forget the mental well-being associated with the access to information; this access reduces anxiety, depression, and even frustration, and is something essential to improve the emotional and mental well-being of patients who have received a diagnosis of cancer, as well as their families [ 8 , 9 ]. Although, in many cases, the main source of information is healthcare professionals [ 10 , 11 ], it is true that doubts and questions sometimes cannot wait, at which point patients or family members seek information in the most accessible way possible, which is using the Internet [ 12 ].…”