SCCM Resource Library-Medical Misinformation and Social Media

Video Transcription

Hello, everyone. I'm Kaitlin Tin-Lohaus, a critical care nurse practitioner at Emory St. Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta.  Thank you to the Society for allowing us to carry on virtually again this year. I will be speaking on a topic that I am sure is familiar to everyone, especially over the  last few years, medical information and social media. I have nothing to disclose. One of my mentors always says, every good talk starts with a good case study.  Well, there are so many to choose from. I bet each of you can think of multiple case examples of misinformation and social media with your patients.  Here are just a few I have heard. Did the COVID vaccine cause my daughter's forniase gangrene? If you don't give my wife ivermectin, you are a bad nurse.  Did the COVID vaccine cause my wife's worsening of her stage four ovarian cancer? If you don't give my mom convalescent plasma, I will transfer her to a better hospital.  It's a problem we're all facing, and we have been facing. What happens for the first time in history is we are no longer the experts.  We have all done years of training, but now at the bedside, our training is being judged against not only WebMD, but it's also against the news, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook.  This is very stressful and hard for us. COVID is a perfect case study for this talk, but there will be studies that I mentioned  that were before the time of COVID because misinformation has been a constant battle.  The learning objectives for this talk include the effects of social media, the negative trend of social media, the revenue of social media, social media engagement, and then finally  combating misinformation for healthcare professionals. So let's start first with the effects of social media.  On the first page of CDC's mental health website, the CDC lists healthy ways to cope with stress. We are all familiar with the traditional ways of coping with stress.  We refer to it a lot as wellness, like taking care of your body, eating well, exercising, don't smoke, drink in moderation, get sleep, and keep up with your health.  Well before all of the usual forms of wellness we are familiar with, the CDC actually lists stepping away from social media first as a healthy way to cope with stress.  Let that sink in. Wellness as we know it is actually second on the list and first is taking a break from social media.  A study by Genscal in 2020 paid people to delete their Facebook accounts for four weeks and after those four weeks people reported better well-being.  This study actually showed what the CDC suggested, that when people leave these platforms we are often happier. Why is social media affecting us so negatively?  Social media was created to connect us all in the beginning, but why is it now causing so much stress?  A study published at the end of 2020 by Cook compared 43,000 reports of COVID news for the year 2020 from major U.S. media, local and regional, international media outlets,  and scientific outlets. In this study, machine learning analyzed these 43,000 news reports with word counting techniques to grade stories on how positive or negative they were.  For example, each article would be graded on positivity or negativity based on their lexicons. Words like appalling, barbaric, catastrophic, dangerous were deemed negative.  And words like applaud, appreciate, expansive, gaining were deemed positive. Percent of COVID negative news varied across national, regional, international, and scientific journals.  They found that the majority, 87% of national U.S. media was negative, which is pretty different than scientific journal reports at 64%.  Of course, this analysis can't be perfect because all of these entities have different missions, but it's still pretty astounding because yes, there is bad news about COVID,  but on the other hand, there's 40% that are finding good things. The positive scientific news just wasn't getting out there, and often when it gets  out there in the mainstream media, it's turned to negative. This study also used COVID case trends as a control to measure the tone of media coverage.  One would think as cases fell, the media would be more positive, but actually as COVID cases were falling, the media still stayed pretty negative.  Worse than negative news being shared, another study looked at 126,000 news stories on Twitter from 2006 to 2017 and found that false news stories were 70% more likely to be shared  on social media than true news stories. They found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people  were more likely to share novel information, whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in reactions.  True stories inspired anticipation, sadness, and joy and trust in reactions. They also looked at news spread by robots versus humans on Twitter, and robots accelerated  the spread of truth and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because of humans, not robots are more likely to spread it.  So now that we know the media is negative, not only from our personal experience, but from all of the presented studies, why is it so negative? What is driving the negativity?  First we need to talk about revenue and how social media makes its money.  How large is social media, Facebook, Twitter, in terms of revenue? Well, when you compare it against the largest news sectors, they are the largest.  With Facebook at 86 billion, Twitter almost 4 billion. So it's not even just the newest sector of media from a revenue standpoint.  It's also the largest and most profitable according to Pew Research 2020 total revenue analysis. Okay.  So it's the largest and most profitable, but do people actually get their news from social media?  Pew Research shows that 53% of Americans often or sometimes get their news from social media. Facebook is the most used social media site for news and 36% of people regularly access  Facebook for their news and 23% regularly access YouTube for their news. So going back to revenue and where is all this revenue coming from?  If your social media site and your business is built around engagement in order to sell the most advertising possible, engagement leads to more advertising that becomes more  revenue. This is your success as a business owner. How do you drive engagement in order to make revenue?  This study, Outgroup Animosity Drives Engagement on Social Media by Vander Linden, analyzed  nearly 3 million social media posts over 2016 to 2020 to learn what makes a post more likely to attract other users.  They focus on posts from conservative and liberal media platforms and Republican and Democratic members of Congress.  They found that on Twitter, each additional word referring to the outgroup increased the number of retweets and shares of that post by 67%.  The outgroup meaning someone on the other side of the political aisle in this particular study.  On Facebook, posts about the outgroup generated angry reactions, laughing reactions, comments, and shares. Posts about ingroup generate like and heart reactions.  Posts about outgroup received much more engagement in total and moral words like evil, hate, and care linked to virality of posts. Outgroup and negativity equals engagement.  If you're a social media site and your business is built around engagement in order to sell  the most advertising possible, negative stories promote more engagement that leads to more advertising that leads to more revenue.  Of course, your algorithms will promote more engagement, which is usually more negative news. This suggests why misinformation is so rampant.  The more engagement, the more it spreads. What do we do now? The U.S. Surgeon General built a plan for providers to combat health misinformation.  The next few slides will go over their recommendations and examples of how to use their recommendations.  This is the U.S. Surgeon General's charge to fight misinformation during the COVID pandemic.  Unprecedented spread of medical misinformation is defined by infodemic by not only the U.S. Surgeon General, but also the United Nations and the World Health Organization.  Health misinformation is specifically defined by the U.S. Surgeon General as information  that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence at that time. We have all experienced this, so what is to be done about it?  First, let's look at what has already been done by the healthcare community. Trusted community members such as healthcare providers, faith leaders, and educators have  spoken directly to their communities to address COVID-19 related questions. This has been done and is still being done in forms of town halls, community meetings  via social and traditional media. In addition, researchers have identified leading sources of COVID-19 misinformation, including  misinformation super-spreaders causing Twitter bans and Facebook deletion.  The U.S. Surgeon General believes that doctors, nurses, and other clinicians are highly trusted and can be effective in addressing health misinformation.  As healthcare professionals, the U.S. Surgeon General asks us to proactively engage with patients and the public on health misinformation.  Take the time to understand each patient's knowledge, beliefs, and values. Listen with empathy and correct misinformation in personalized ways.  Use less technical language and promote patient health literacy on a regular basis.  In addition, professional associations can equip their members to serve as subject matter  experts for journalists and effectively communicate peer-reviewed research and expert opinions online.  This is a great example from our very own past SCCM President last year, Dr. Greg Martin. In this post, he uses technology and media platforms to share accurate health information  with the public with a personal connection explaining why he is vaccinated.  Healthcare professionals can also partner with community groups and other local organizations to prevent and address health misinformation.  Hospital systems can work with community members to develop localized public health messages. Associations and other health organizations should offer  trainings for clinicians on how to address misinformation in ways that account for a patient's diverse needs, concerns, backgrounds, and experiences.  This is a great example that happened in my city.  Metro Atlanta Health Systems came together and addressed the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic.  This was also published as a Facebook live session on our social media and reposted on Twitter and YouTube.  Thank you again. I hope this talk provided you with information about how and why misinformation is so prevalent in social media and how to combat it.

Video Summary

In this video, Kaitlin Tin-Lohaus, a critical care nurse practitioner, discusses the impact of medical information and social media. She highlights the prevalence of misinformation and gives examples of false claims related to COVID-19. Tin-Lohaus explains that social media can have negative effects on mental health and well-being, citing a study that shows people report better well-being after taking a break from platforms like Facebook. She also discusses how social media platforms are driven by revenue and engagement, often promoting negative news. Lastly, she outlines the U.S. Surgeon General's recommendations for healthcare professionals to combat health misinformation, emphasizing the importance of engaging with patients, promoting health literacy, and partnering with community groups.

Asset Subtitle

Professional Development and Education, Quality and Patient Safety, 2022

Asset Caption

This session will delve into the pervasive amount of medical misinformation that has permeated our society and how it affects the critical care medicine professional. The vast amount of misinformation that has been spread via vehicles such as social media and government officials leads to a skeptical public when medical professionals give advice on how to combat medical issues. The COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccination process will be main topics of discussion.

Meta Tag

Content Type Presentation

Knowledge Area Professional Development and Education

Knowledge Area Quality and Patient Safety

Knowledge Level Foundational

Knowledge Level Intermediate

Knowledge Level Advanced

Membership Level Select

Tag Professional Development

Tag Evidence Based Medicine

Year 2022

Keywords

misinformation

COVID-19

mental health

engagement

healthcare professionals

	Society of Critical Care Medicine 500 Midway Drive Mount Prospect, IL 60056 USA Phone: +1 847 827-6888 Fax: +1 847 439-7226 Email: support@sccm.org	Contact Us About SCCM Newsroom Advertising & Sponsorship DONATE	MySCCM LearnICU Patients & Families Surviving Sepsis Campaign Critical Care Societies Collaborative	GET OUR NEWSLETTER
© Society of Critical Care Medicine. All rights reserved. \| Privacy Statement \| Terms & Conditions The Society of Critical Care Medicine, SCCM, and Critical Care Congress are registered trademarks of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.