We are increasingly proactive in our hunt for accurate health related information, with large proportions of our searches online being for health information.

Given this importance, there have been numerous attempts to understand how health information spreads online.

There have been a number of studies highlighting the importance of social networks for such dissemination, with a growing appreciation for the importance of targeting specific individuals within a community.

The reliability of health information

Whilst the flow of information is undoubtedly important, so too is the format of the content. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon examined the role humor plays in the spread of positive health messages.

A recent study from the University of Sussex tested the role the ‘newsworthiness’ of the content.

The researchers examined the information currently online for influenza related topics in both English and Italian. The analysis revealed that there was a big difference between the two languages.

It emerged that official sources tended to promote strong, evidence based material, whilst commercial websites were more inclined to promote faddy, non-evidence based measures.

In the English language searches, the official sources tended to dominate the listings, but in the Italian search, these poor quality sources came up significantly higher.

Divergent focus

Some 40% of the websites appearing high up for Italian searches were from newspapers or magazines. Interestingly, the researchers found a number of stories that were covered in both English and Italian media.

Whilst the English media focused on the low efficacy of a vaccine, the Italian media ramped up the hype, focusing instead on deaths that they believed to be attributed to the vaccine.

The more extreme the bad news, the more highly they appeared in the rankings, even if the stories were later refuted.

“This study shows how information quality in health-related web searches varies significantly between languages, and points to ‘newsworthiness’ as an important aspect of health information results that could potentially impact on the success of the vaccination campaigns,” the researchers say.

All of which underlines the importance for health officials to ensure that the information that appears online is reliable and accurate.