scholarly journals The Erosion of Public Trust and SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines— More Action is Needed

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Nahum ◽  
Dimitri M Drekonja ◽  
Jonathan D Alpern
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Drug Administration ◽  
Food And Drug Administration ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Regulatory Process ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Centers For Disease Control

Abstract As states and health systems prepare to deliver SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to the American public, a confluence of factors has the potential to interfere with these efforts: Misinformation about COVID-19, vaccine hesitancy, and the erosion of the American public’s trust in the vaccine regulatory process due to recent and ongoing events. Broad action is needed to address these issues, including improved and consistent communication by the Food and Drug Administration, restoration of the Centers for Disease Control as an independent and science-driven institution, and more aggressive policies to counteract misinformation, particularly on social media platforms.

scholarly journals Young Adult Identification and Perception of Hashtag-Based Vaping Claims on Instagram

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-618
Author(s):  
Linnea I. Laestadius ◽  
Kendall Penndorf ◽  
Melissa Seidl ◽  
Pallav Pokhrel ◽  
Ryan Patrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Drug Administration ◽  
Food And Drug Administration ◽  
Electronic Cigarette ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Practical Constraints

Social media platforms are home to large volumes of ambiguous hashtag-based claims about the health, modified-risk, and cessation benefits of electronic cigarette products (e.g., #Vapingsavedmylife). The objective of this study was to qualitatively explore how young adults interpret these hashtags on the popular platform Instagram. Specifically, we sought to identify if they view these hashtags as making health-related claims, and if they find these claims to be credible and valid. We conducted 12 focus groups in 2018 with non–tobacco users, smokers, dual users, and vapers between the ages of 18 and 24 ( n = 69). Using real Instagram posts to guide discussion, participants reflected on the meaning of potentially claims-making hashtags. Participants interpreted the majority of the hashtags as making health-related claims. However, many participants felt that the claims were too exaggerated to be entirely valid. Some participants, including dual users and vapers, argued that smoking and vaping were largely equivalent. Smokers were particularly skeptical of claims. Findings suggest that the U. S. Food and Drug Administration should consider hashtag-based claims in their regulatory efforts. However, further research is needed on how to pragmatically address claims taking the form of hashtags given legal and practical constraints.

scholarly journals The South Korean Government’s Response to Combat COVID-19 Misinformation: Analysis of “Fact and Issue Check” on the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website

2021 ◽  
pp. 101053952110147
Author(s):  
Yaena Song ◽  
Linda Ko ◽  
Sou Hyun Jang
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Centers For Disease Control

This study aimed to examine the types of misinformation spreading in South Korea during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic by exploring the fact-checking posts uploaded on the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) website. We conducted a content analysis of the posts written on the KCDC website titled, “COVID-19: Fact and Issue Check,” from February to August 2020 (n = 81). Two coders individually coded the posts using a codebook. Discrepancies in coding were discussed to reach reconciliation. Fifteen different Korean government agencies used the KCDC platform to refute various topics of COVID-19 misinformation, including policy (42.0%), how to prevent the spread (16.0%), health care professionals (12.3%), testing (11.1%), prevention (self-care) (9.9%), masks (8.6%), confirmed cases (8.6%), statistics (3.7%), self-quarantine (2.5%), and treatment (1.2%). We found that there are more dissemination and correction of nonmedical areas of COVID-19 misinformation than medical areas in Korea. Future studies need to examine to what extent the corrected COVID-19 misinformation has been disseminated on different social media platforms, beyond the KCDC website.

The platform beat: Algorithmic watchdogs in the disinformation age

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110283
Author(s):  
Philip M Napoli
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Social Media Platforms

As digital platforms have come to play a central role in the news and information ecosystem, a new realm of watchdog journalism has emerged – the platform beat. Journalists on the platform beat report on the operation, use and misuse of social media platforms and search engines. The platform beat can serve as an important mechanism for increasing the accountability of digital platforms, in ways that can affect public trust in the platforms, but that can also, hopefully, lead to the development of stronger, more reliable, and ultimately more trustworthy, platforms. However, there are a number of tensions, vulnerabilities and potential conflicts of interest that characterize the platform beat. This article explores these complex dynamics of the platform beat in an effort assess the capacity of those on the platform beat to enhance the accountability and trustworthiness of digital platforms.

scholarly journals Restaurant Food Cooling Practices†

2012 ◽  
Vol 75 (12) ◽  
pp. 2172-2178 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA GREEN BROWN ◽  
DANNY RIPLEY ◽  
HENRY BLADE ◽  
DAVE REIMANN ◽  
KAREN EVERSTINE ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
Environmental Health ◽  
Drug Administration ◽  
Food And Drug Administration ◽  
Restaurant Industry ◽  
Foodborne Illness ◽  
Air Space ◽  
Food Workers ◽  
Cooling Methods

Improper food cooling practices are a significant cause of foodborne illness, yet little is known about restaurant food cooling practices. This study was conducted to examine food cooling practices in restaurants. Specifically, the study assesses the frequency with which restaurants meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommendations aimed at reducing pathogen proliferation during food cooling. Members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Environmental Health Specialists Network collected data on food cooling practices in 420 restaurants. The data collected indicate that many restaurants are not meeting FDA recommendations concerning cooling. Although most restaurant kitchen managers report that they have formal cooling processes (86%) and provide training to food workers on proper cooling (91%), many managers said that they do not have tested and verified cooling processes (39%), do not monitor time or temperature during cooling processes (41%), or do not calibrate thermometers used for monitoring temperatures (15%). Indeed, 86% of managers reported cooling processes that did not incorporate all FDA-recommended components. Additionally, restaurants do not always follow recommendations concerning specific cooling methods, such as refrigerating cooling food at shallow depths, ventilating cooling food, providing open-air space around the tops and sides of cooling food containers, and refraining from stacking cooling food containers on top of each other. Data from this study could be used by food safety programs and the restaurant industry to target training and intervention efforts concerning cooling practices. These efforts should focus on the most frequent poor cooling practices, as identified by this study.

scholarly journals Network Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation on Social Media

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Melton ◽  
Olufunto A. Olusanya ◽  
Arash Shaban-Nejad
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Vaccine Safety ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
World Population ◽  
Semantic Network Analysis ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform

Almost half of the world population has received at least one dose of vaccine against the COVID-19 virus. However, vaccine hesitancy amongst certain populations is driving new waves of infections at alarming rates. The popularity of online social media platforms attracts supporters of the anti-vaccination movement who spread misinformation about vaccine safety and effectiveness. We conducted a semantic network analysis to explore and analyze COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on the Reddit social media platform.

scholarly journals Complementing the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System With Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting From Social Media: Comparative Analysis (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeyun Zhou ◽  
Kyle Emerson Hultgren
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Adverse Event ◽  
Drug Administration ◽  
Reporting System ◽  
Food And Drug Administration ◽  
Adverse Event Reporting System ◽  
Adverse Event Reporting ◽  
Event Reporting ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
The Us

BACKGROUND Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) can occur any time someone uses a medication. ADRs are systematically tracked and cataloged, with varying degrees of success, in order to better understand their etiology and develop methods of prevention. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) for this purpose. FAERS collects information from myriad sources, but the primary reporters have traditionally been medical professionals and pharmacovigilance data from manufacturers. Recent studies suggest that information shared publicly on social media platforms related to medication use could be of benefit in complementing FAERS data in order to have a richer picture of how medications are actually being used and the experiences people are having across large populations. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to validate the accuracy and precision of social media methodology and conduct evaluations of Twitter ADR reporting for commonly used pharmaceutical agents. METHODS ADR data from the 10 most prescribed medications according to pharmacy claims data were collected from both FAERS and Twitter. In order to obtain data from FAERS, the SafeRx database, a curated collection of FAERS data, was used to collect data from March 1, 2016, to March 31, 2017. Twitter data were manually scraped during the same time period to extract similar data using an algorithm designed to minimize noise and false signals in social media data. RESULTS A total of 40,539 FAERS ADR reports were obtained via SafeRx and more than 40,000 tweets containing the drug names were obtained from Twitter’s Advanced Search engine. While the FAERS data were specific to ADRs, the Twitter data were more limited. Only hydrocodone/acetaminophen, prednisone, amoxicillin, gabapentin, and metformin had a sufficient volume of ADR content for review and comparison. For metformin, diarrhea was the side effect that resulted in no difference between the two platforms (<i>P</i>=.30). For hydrocodone/acetaminophen, ineffectiveness as an ADR that resulted in no difference (<i>P</i>=.60). For gabapentin, there were no differences in terms of the ADRs ineffectiveness and fatigue (<i>P</i>=.15 and <i>P=</i>.67, respectively). For amoxicillin, hypersensitivity, nausea, and rash shared similar profiles between platforms (<i>P</i>=.35, <i>P=</i>.05, and <i>P=</i>.31, respectively). CONCLUSIONS FAERS and Twitter shared similarities in types of data reported and a few unique items to each data set as well. The use of Twitter as an ADR pharmacovigilance platform should continue to be studied as a unique and complementary source of information rather than a validation tool of existing ADR databases.

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