Maki Ali, Evans Roger, Ghezzi Pietro
Clinical and Laboratory Investigations, Brighton and Sussex Medical School , Falmer , UK.
School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, University of Brighton , Moulsecoomb , UK.
Front Immunol. 2015 Dec 8;6:616. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2015.00616. eCollection 2015.
Information available to the public influences the approach of the population toward vaccination against influenza compared with other preventative approaches. In this study, we have analyzed the first 200 websites returned by searching Google on two topics (prevention of influenza and influenza vaccine), in English and Italian. For all the four searches above, websites were classified according to their typology (government, commercial, professional, portals, etc.) and for their trustworthiness as defined by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) score, which assesses whether they provide some basic elements of information quality (IQ): authorship, currency, disclosure, and references. The type of information described was also assessed to add another dimension of IQ. Websites on influenza prevention were classified according to the type of preventative approach mentioned (vaccine, lifestyle, hygiene, complementary medicine, etc.), whether the approaches were in agreement with evidence-based medicine (EBM) or not. Websites on influenza vaccination were classified as pro- or anti-vaccine, or neutral. The great majority of websites described EBM approaches to influenza prevention and had a pro-vaccine orientation. Government websites mainly pointed at EBM preventative approaches and had a pro-vaccine orientation, while there was a higher proportion of commercial websites among those which promote non-EBM approaches. Although the JAMA score was lower in commercial websites, it did not correlate with the preventative approaches suggested or the orientation toward vaccines. For each of the four search engine result pages (SERP), only one website displayed the health-of-the-net (HON) seal. In the SERP on vaccines, journalistic websites were the most abundant category and ranked higher than average in both languages. Analysis using natural language processing showed that journalistic websites were mostly reporting news about two specific topics (different in the two languages). While the ranking by Google favors EBM approaches and, in English, does not promote commercial websites, in both languages it gives a great advantage to news. Thus, the type of news published during the influenza season probably has a key importance in orienting the public opinion due to its high visibility. This raises important questions on the relationships between health IQ, trustworthiness, and newsworthiness.
与其他预防方法相比，公众可获取的信息会影响民众对待流感疫苗接种的态度。在本研究中，我们分析了在谷歌上搜索两个主题（流感预防和流感疫苗）时返回的前200个英文和意大利文网站。对于上述所有四项搜索，网站根据其类型（政府、商业、专业、门户网站等）以及由美国医学会杂志（JAMA）评分定义的可信度进行分类，该评分评估网站是否提供信息质量（IQ）的一些基本要素：作者身份、时效性、披露情况和参考文献。还对所描述信息的类型进行了评估，以增加信息质量的另一个维度。关于流感预防的网站根据所提及的预防方法类型（疫苗、生活方式、卫生、补充医学等）进行分类，这些方法是否符合循证医学（EBM）。关于流感疫苗接种的网站分为支持疫苗、反对疫苗或中立。绝大多数网站描述了循证医学的流感预防方法，并具有支持疫苗的倾向。政府网站主要指向循证医学的预防方法，并具有支持疫苗的倾向，而在推广非循证医学方法的网站中，商业网站的比例更高。尽管商业网站的JAMA评分较低，但它与所建议的预防方法或对疫苗的倾向无关。对于四个搜索引擎结果页面（SERP）中的每一个，只有一个网站显示了健康网络（HON）标志。在关于疫苗的SERP中，新闻类网站是最丰富的类别，并且在两种语言中排名均高于平均水平。使用自然语言处理的分析表明，新闻类网站大多报道关于两个特定主题的新闻（两种语言中的主题不同）。虽然谷歌的排名有利于循证医学方法，并且在英文中不推广商业网站，但在两种语言中它都给新闻带来了很大优势。因此，流感季节发布的新闻类型可能因其高可见性而在引导公众舆论方面具有关键重要性。这就健康信息质量、可信度和新闻价值之间的关系提出了重要问题。
