Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Aug 14:12:1438981.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1438981. eCollection 2024.

Strategies and bottlenecks to tackle infodemic in public health: a scoping review

Andrea Gentili #  1 , Leonardo Villani #  1 , Tommaso Osti  1 , Valerio Flavio Corona  1 , Angelica Val Gris  1 , Andrea Zaino  1 , Michele Bonacquisti  1 , Lucia De Maio  1 , Vincenzo Solimene  1 , Maria Rosaria Gualano  2   3 , Carlo Favaretti  3 , Walter Ricciardi  1 , Fidelia Cascini  1
Affiliations

Strategies and bottlenecks to tackle infodemic in public health: a scoping review

Andrea Gentili et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: The World Health Organization defines "infodemic" as the phenomenon of an uncontrolled spread of information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak, causing confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health. The aim of this scoping review is to examine international evidence and identify strategies and bottlenecks to tackle health-related fake news.

Methods: We performed a scoping review of the literature from 1 January 2018 to 26 January 2023 on PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus electronic databases. We also performed a search of grey literature on institutional websites. The research question has been defined according to the PCC (population, concept, and context) mnemonic for constructing research questions in scoping reviews.

Results: The overall research in the scientific databases yielded a total of 5,516 records. After removing duplicates, and screening the titles, abstracts, and full texts, we included 21 articles from scientific literature. Moreover, 5 documents were retrieved from institutional websites. Based on their content, we decided to group recommendations and bottlenecks into five different and well-defined areas of intervention, which we called strategies: "foster proper communication through the collaboration between science and social media companies and users," "institutional and regulatory interventions," "check and debunking," "increase health literacy," and "surveillance and monitoring through new digital tools."

Conclusion: The multidisciplinary creation of standardized toolkits that collect recommendations from the literature and institutions can provide a valid solution to limit the infodemic, increasing the health education of both citizens and health professionals, providing the knowledge to recognize fake news, as well as supporting the creation and validation of AI tools aimed at prebunking and debunking.

Keywords: bottlenecks; communication; disinformation; infodemic; misinformation; public health; recommendations.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA for scoping reviews flow diagram (by Moher and colleagues).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Representation and connections among the different identified strategies to tackle infodemic in public health.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Smailhodzic E, Hooijsma W, Boonstra A, Langley DJ. Social media use in healthcare: a systematic review of effects on patients and on their relationship with healthcare professionals. BMC Health Serv Res. (2016) 16:442. doi: 10.1186/s12913-016-1691-0, PMID: - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Laranjo L, Arguel A, Neves AL, Gallagher AM, Kaplan R, Mortimer N, et al. . The influence of social networking sites on health behavior change: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Am Med Inform Assoc. (2014) 22, 22:243–56. doi: 10.1136/amiajnl-2014-002841 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lupton D. Health promotion in the digital era: a critical commentary. Health Promotion International. (2015). Oxford University Press, 30:174–83. - PubMed
    1. Vosoughi S, Roy D, Aral S. The spread of true and false news online. Science. (2018) 359:1146–51. doi: 10.1126/science.aap9559 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Oyeyemi SO, Gabarron E, Wynn R. Ebola, twitter, and misinformation: a dangerous combination? BMJ 349:g6178 (2014). doi: 10.1136/bmj.g6178 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources