Credibility Judgment of Health Information on Facebook: A Case of Thai Facebook Users
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Facebook users worldwide had been facing challenges of information credibility. This study aimed to address this issue among Thai Facebook users by focusing on health information in particular. This study applied heuristic approach as a frame of the study. Data were collected from 50 participants by using in-depth interviews. The results revealed three different processes and five heuristics, namely, reputation heuristic, authority heuristic, expectancy violation heuristic, persuasive intense heuristic, and bandwagon heuristics that participants adopted when making a credibility judgment of health information on Facebook. Implication of the study and a direction of future research were also discussed.
Article Details
The manuscript submitted for publication must be the original version, submitted only to this particular journal with no prior acceptance for publication elsewhere in other academic journals. The manuscript must also not violate the copyright issue by means of plagiarism.
References
Begg, I. M., Anas, A., & Farinacci, S. (1992). Dissociation of processes in belief: Source recollection, statement familiarity, and the illusion of truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 121, 446-458. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.121.4.446
Bellur, S., & Sundar, S. S. (2014). How can we tell when a heuristic has been used? Design and analysis strategies for capturing the operation of heuristics. Communication Methods and Measures, 8, 116-137.
Burgoon, J. K., Bonito, J. A., Bengtsson, B., Cederberg, C., Lundeberg, M., & Allspack, L. (2000). Interactivity in human+computer interaction: A study of credibility, understanding, and influence. Computers in Human Behavior, 16(2000), 553-574.
Chinthanorm, K. (2008). Perception of importance of factors influencing the credibility of health-related websites. (Unpublished master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University).
Chou, H-T. G., & Edge, N. (2012). “They are happier and having better lives than I am.”: The impact of using Facebook on perceptions of others’ lives. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15(2), 117-121.
Cline, R. J. W., & Haynes, K. M. (2001). Consumer health information seeking on the internet: The state of the art. Health Education Research, 16(6), 671-692.
De Choudhury, M., Morris, M. R., & White, R. W. (2014). Seeking and sharing health information online: Comparing search engines and social media. CHI 2014 (pp.1365–1376). Toronto, Canada: ACM.
Derham, R., Cragg, P., & Morrish, S. (2011). Creating value: An SME and social media. In Proceedings of Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) 2011 (pp.1-9). Australia: Queensland University of Technology.
Diviani, N., van der Putte, B., Meppelink, C. S., & van Weert, J. C. M. (2016). Exploring the role of health literacy in the evaluation of online health information: Insights from a mixed method study. Patient Education and Counseling, 99(2016), 1017-1025.
Dutta-Bergman, M. (2003). Trusted online source of health information: Differences in demographics, health belief, and health information orientation. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 5(3), e21.
Eastin, M. S. (2001). Credibility assessment of online health information: The effects of source expertise and knowledge of content. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 6(4). doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2001.tb00126.x
Eysenbach, G., & Diepgen, T. L. (1999). Patients looking for information on the Internet and seeking teleadvice: Motivation, expectations, and misconceptions as expressed in e-mails sent to physicians. Archive of Dermatology, 135(2), 151-156.
Eysenbach, G., & Köhler, C. (2002). How do consumers search for and appraise health information on the world wide web? Qualitative study using focus groups, usability tests, and in-depth interviews. British Medical Journal, 324, 573-577.
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fogg, B. J., Soohoo, C., Danielson, D. R., Marable, L., Standford, J, & Tauber, E. R. (2003). How do
users evaluate the credibility of web sites? A study with over 2,500 participants. In Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on Designing for User Experiences (pp.1-15). New York: ACM. doi: 10.1145/997078.997097.
Fogg, B. J., & Tseng, S. (1999). The element of computer credibility. CHI’99, Pittsburgh, PA. USA: ACM Press.
Glaser, A. (2018). Why some Americans are cheering Germany for taking on Facebook’s policy that you need to use your real name. Retrieved June 30, 2018, from https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/why-some-americans-are-cheering-germany-for-taking-on-facebooks-real-name-policy.html
Hovland, C. I., & Weiss, W. (1951). The influence of source credibility on communication effectiveness. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(4), 635-650.
Kahneman, D. (2012). Thinking, fast and slow. London, UK: Penguin Books.
Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestr, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building block of social media. Business Horizon, 54(3), 241-251.
Kim, S. U., & Syn, S. Y. (2016). Credibility and usefulness of health information on Facebook: A survey study with U.S. college student. Retrieved June 30, 2018, form http://InformationR.net/ir/21-4/paper727.html
Liao, Q. V., & Fu, W. (2014). Age differences in credibility judgements of online health information. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 21(1), 1-23.
Metzger, M. J. (2007). Making sense of credibility on the web: Models for evaluating online information and recommendations for future research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(13), 2078-2091.
Metzger, M. J., Flanagin, A. J., & Medders, R. B. (2010). Social and heuristic approaches to credibility evaluation online. Journal of Communication, 60(2010), 413-439.
Miller, L. M. S., & Bell, R. A. (2012). Online health information seeking: The influence of age, information trustworthiness, and search challenges. Journal of Aging and Health, 24(3), 524-541. doi: 10.1177/0898264311428167
Newman, M. W., Lauterbach, D., Munson, S. A., Resnick, P., & Morris, M. E. (2011). It’s not that I don’t have problems, I’m just not putting them on Facebook: Challenges and opportunities in using online social networks for health. In Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp.341-350). Hangzhou, China: ACM.
Park, H., Rodger, S., & Stemmle, J. (2011). Health organizations’ use of Facebook for health advertising and promotion. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 62-77.
Pew Research Center’s Internet & American life Project. (2011). The social life of health information, 2011. Retrieved February 24, 2014, from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Social-Life-of-Health-Infor.aspx.
Prybutok, G., & Ryan, S. (2015). Social media: The key to health information access for 18- to 30-year-old college students. Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 33(4), 132-141. doi: 10.1097/CIN.0000000000000147.
Self, C. C. (2009). Credibility. In D. W. Stacks, & M. B. Salwen (Eds.), An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research, 2nd ed., (pp.435-456). NY: Routledge.
Statt, D. A. (1997). Understanding the consumer: A psychological approach. UK: McMillan Business.
Tseng, S., & Fogg, B. J. (1999). Credibility and computing technology. Communication of The ACM, 42(5), 39-44.