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. 2022 Jan 25;24(1):e28152.
doi: 10.2196/28152.

Medical and Health-Related Misinformation on Social Media: Bibliometric Study of the Scientific Literature

Andy Wai Kan Yeung  1   2 , Anela Tosevska  2   3 , Elisabeth Klager  2 , Fabian Eibensteiner  2   4 , Christos Tsagkaris  5 , Emil D Parvanov  2   6 , Faisal A Nawaz  7 , Sabine Völkl-Kernstock  2 , Eva Schaden  2   8 , Maria Kletecka-Pulker  2 , Harald Willschke  2   8 , Atanas G Atanasov  2   9
Affiliations

Medical and Health-Related Misinformation on Social Media: Bibliometric Study of the Scientific Literature

Andy Wai Kan Yeung et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Social media has been extensively used for the communication of health-related information and consecutively for the potential spread of medical misinformation. Conventional systematic reviews have been published on this topic to identify original articles and to summarize their methodological approaches and themes. A bibliometric study could complement their findings, for instance, by evaluating the geographical distribution of the publications and determining if they were well cited and disseminated in high-impact journals.

Objective: The aim of this study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of the current literature to discover the prevalent trends and topics related to medical misinformation on social media.

Methods: The Web of Science Core Collection electronic database was accessed to identify relevant papers with the following search string: ALL=(misinformati* OR "wrong informati*" OR disinformati* OR "misleading informati*" OR "fake news*") AND ALL=(medic* OR illness* OR disease* OR health* OR pharma* OR drug* OR therap*) AND ALL=("social media*" OR Facebook* OR Twitter* OR Instagram* OR YouTube* OR Weibo* OR Whatsapp* OR Reddit* OR TikTok* OR WeChat*). Full records were exported to a bibliometric software, VOSviewer, to link bibliographic information with citation data. Term and keyword maps were created to illustrate recurring terms and keywords.

Results: Based on an analysis of 529 papers on medical and health-related misinformation on social media, we found that the most popularly investigated social media platforms were Twitter (n=90), YouTube (n=67), and Facebook (n=57). Articles targeting these 3 platforms had higher citations per paper (>13.7) than articles covering other social media platforms (Instagram, Weibo, WhatsApp, Reddit, and WeChat; citations per paper <8.7). Moreover, social media platform-specific papers accounted for 44.1% (233/529) of all identified publications. Investigations on these platforms had different foci. Twitter-based research explored cyberchondria and hypochondriasis, YouTube-based research explored tobacco smoking, and Facebook-based research studied vaccine hesitancy related to autism. COVID-19 was a common topic investigated across all platforms. Overall, the United States contributed to half of all identified papers, and 80% of the top 10 most productive institutions were based in this country. The identified papers were mostly published in journals of the categories public environmental and occupational health, communication, health care sciences services, medical informatics, and medicine general internal, with the top journal being the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Conclusions: There is a significant platform-specific topic preference for social media investigations on medical misinformation. With a large population of internet users from China, it may be reasonably expected that Weibo, WeChat, and TikTok (and its Chinese version Douyin) would be more investigated in future studies. Currently, these platforms present research gaps that leave their usage and information dissemination warranting further evaluation. Future studies should also include social platforms targeting non-English users to provide a wider global perspective.

Keywords: COVID-19; Twitter; bibliometric; dissemination; health; knowledge exchange; social media.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Total publication and citation counts of papers on medical and health-related misinformation on social media. Data are shown until the end of 2020.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Term map showing words/phrases extracted from the titles and abstracts of the 529 papers. Circle size is related to the number of papers mentioning the word/phrase. Circle color is related to the citations per paper. The proximity between circles is related to how frequently the terms are co-mentioned in the same papers.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Keyword map of the 529 papers. Circle size is related to the number of papers including the word/phrase as a keyword. Circle color is related to the citations per paper. The proximity between circles is related to how frequently the terms are co-mentioned in the same papers.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Keyword maps of the papers investigating (A) Twitter, (B) YouTube, and (C) Facebook. Circle size is related to the number of papers mentioning the respective word/phrase as a keyword. Circle color is related to the clustering of the words by the default setting of VOSviewer. The proximity between circles is related to how frequently the terms are co-mentioned in the same papers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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