Misinformation on cardiovascular health

Misinformation on cardiovascular health: A scoping review of literature and social media

Research Gap:

Despite this large spread of online misinformation related to diverse health topics, it is unknown if this represents a “real” problem for cardiovascular health. Common metrics used to assess the information, including “likes”, “views (viral)”, or “comments”, could not represent appropriately the impact of misinformation on the population. The assessment of the impact of misinformation can be divided into two groups: prevalence and circulation of misinformation, and impact and reception of misinformation. An adequate assessment of these components represents large methodological challenges, for this reason, in this pilot project, we target to answer two questions: a) What is already known about misinformation on cardiovascular health, and what methods have been used to acquire this knowledge? b) What is the frequency of misinformation that a person can find when searching for cardiovascular health information on social media

Overall goals and specific aims:

To identify the presence and magnitude of online cardiovascular health misinformation using two approaches: a scoping review of available scientific publications, and a descriptive study that simulates a search on social media and search engines to assess what information is available. The World Health Organization defines health misinformation as false information that was not created to hurt others, often started by someone who genuinely wants to understand a topic and then shared. A different criterion is disinformation, which is false information created to profit from it or cause harm.

Specific aims:

1. To describe and synthesize the existing evidence on misinformation on cardiovascular health, from prevention to treatment, through a scoping review of the literature.
2. To assess the magnitude of misinformation published in Spanish, English, and Hindi in the most used social media platforms through a systematic search of posts and a qualitative content analysis.