Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City, NY, United States.
Critica, Bronx, NY, United States.
JMIR Infodemiology. 2023 Nov 14;3:e50138. doi: 10.2196/50138.
Health misinformation shared on social media can have negative health consequences; yet, there is a dearth of field research testing interventions to address health misinformation in real time, digitally, and in situ on social media.
We describe a field study of a pilot program of "infodemiologists" trained with evidence-informed intervention techniques heavily influenced by principles of motivational interviewing. Here we provide a detailed description of the nature of infodemiologists' interventions on posts sharing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, present an initial evaluation framework for such field research, and use available engagement metrics to quantify the impact of these in-group messengers on the web-based threads on which they are intervening.
We monitored Facebook (Meta Platforms, Inc) profiles of news organizations marketing to 3 geographic regions (Newark, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; and central Texas). Between December 2020 and April 2021, infodemiologists intervened in 145 Facebook news posts that generated comments containing either false or misleading information about vaccines or overt antivaccine sentiment. Engagement (emojis plus replies) data were collected on Facebook news posts, the initial comment containing misinformation (level 1 comment), and the infodemiologist's reply (level 2 reply comment). A comparison-group evaluation design was used, with numbers of replies, emoji reactions, and engagements for level 1 comments compared with the median metrics of matched comments using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Level 2 reply comments (intervention) were also benchmarked against the corresponding metric of matched reply comments (control) using the Wilcoxon signed rank test (paired at the level 1 comment level). Infodemiologists' level 2 reply comments (intervention) and matched reply comments (control) were further compared using 3 Poisson regression models.
In total, 145 interventions were conducted on 132 Facebook news posts. The level 1 comments received a median of 3 replies, 3 reactions, and 7 engagements. The matched comments received a median of 1.5 (median of IQRs 3.75) engagements. Infodemiologists made 322 level 2 reply comments, precipitating 189 emoji reactions and a median of 0.5 (median of IQRs IQR 0) engagements. The matched reply comments received a median of 1 (median of IQRs 2.5) engagement. Compared to matched comments, level 1 comments received more replies, emoji reactions, and engagements. Compared to matched reply comments, level 2 reply comments received fewer and narrower ranges of replies, reactions, and engagements, except for the median comparison for replies.
Overall, empathy-first communication strategies based on motivational interviewing garnered less engagement relative to matched controls. One possible explanation is that our interventions quieted contentious, misinformation-laden threads about vaccines on social media. This work reinforces research on accuracy nudges and cyberbullying interventions that also reduce engagement. More research leveraging field studies of real-time interventions is needed, yet data transparency by technology platforms will be essential to facilitate such experiments.
在社交媒体上分享的健康错误信息可能会产生负面的健康后果；然而，在社交媒体上实时、数字化和现场测试干预措施以解决健康错误信息的现场研究却很少。
我们描述了一项针对“信息流行病学家”的试点计划的现场研究，这些信息流行病学家接受了基于证据的干预技术的培训，这些技术深受动机访谈原则的影响。在这里，我们详细描述了信息流行病学家干预分享有关 COVID-19 疫苗错误信息的帖子的性质，提出了这种现场研究的初步评估框架，并使用可用的参与度指标来量化这些群体内信息传播者对他们所干预的在线帖子的影响。
我们监测了面向三个地理区域（新泽西州纽瓦克、伊利诺伊州芝加哥和德克萨斯州中部）的新闻机构的 Facebook（Meta Platforms，Inc）个人资料。在 2020 年 12 月至 2021 年 4 月期间，信息流行病学家干预了 145 个 Facebook 新闻帖子，这些帖子引发了关于疫苗的虚假或误导性信息或明显的反疫苗情绪的评论。在 Facebook 新闻帖子、包含错误信息的初始评论（一级评论）和信息流行病学家的回复（二级回复评论）上收集了参与度（表情符号加回复）数据。使用 Wilcoxon 符号秩检验将匹配评论的中位数指标与一级评论的回复数量、表情符号反应和参与度进行比较，采用了对照组评估设计。二级回复评论（干预）也与相应的匹配回复评论（对照）进行了基准测试（在一级评论级别进行配对）。使用 3 个泊松回归模型进一步比较了信息流行病学家的二级回复评论（干预）和匹配的回复评论（对照）。
总共对 132 个 Facebook 新闻帖子进行了 145 次干预。一级评论收到了 3 条回复、3 个表情符号反应和 7 次参与。匹配的评论收到了中位数为 1.5（IQR 中位数为 3.75）次的参与。信息流行病学家发布了 322 条二级回复评论，引发了 189 个表情符号反应，中位数为 0.5（IQR 中位数为 0）次参与。匹配的回复评论收到了中位数为 1（IQR 中位数为 2.5）次的参与。与匹配的评论相比，一级评论收到了更多的回复、表情符号反应和参与度。与匹配的回复评论相比，二级回复评论收到的回复、反应和参与度较少，且范围较窄，除了回复的中位数比较外。
总体而言，基于动机访谈的同理心优先沟通策略与对照组相比，获得的参与度较低。一种可能的解释是，我们的干预措施使社交媒体上关于疫苗的充满争议和错误信息的线程安静下来。这项工作加强了对准确性提示和网络欺凌干预的研究，这些干预也会降低参与度。需要更多利用实时干预现场研究的研究，但技术平台的数据透明度对于促进此类实验至关重要。
