Trust in Online Medicine
Be Cautious, Not Straying Online

Here are listed the most popular adversary of valid information sources:

One of the most available sources is online forums, discussions on social media . To this category sources that are opened for editing (e.g., “Wikipedia”) also can be related.

. To this category sources that are opened for editing (e.g., “Wikipedia”) also can be related. Another source is advertising materials advice from which sometimes can be addressed to the mass audience invisibly, though they have to be moderated before publishing.

advice from which sometimes can be addressed to the mass audience invisibly, though they have to be moderated before publishing. In addition, publications without references are unfounded and are more likely to provide fake and unverified recommendations.

The named above sources can be truly obvious in terms of a lack of reliability. According to doctors’ opinions, clinicians are prone to expect worst-case scenarios as the published advice tend to delay actual treatment even in urgent situations, worse the current state and well-being, as well as violate privacy and jeopardize expertise in general (Benigeri & Pluye, 2003). Speaking precisely and taking forums as an example, it should be mentioned that more frequently they are organized by a group of users; some time is passing, and a community of people with common interests and alike stories is formed. Life experience, which can sometimes be embellished or completely falsified, becomes the basis a key to start or continue a virtual conversation. In the case of health, it can be fraught with the fact that people, especially in case of comparing themselves with others who have similar experiences or symptoms (Widyanto et al., 2011) and being motivated to find out answers to personal questions (Das & Faxvaag, 2014), will tend to use the same methods of treatment to cure, without taking into account the peculiarities of the body, its structure, and biological nature. In addition, expert or at the worst common-sense advice are rather rare met than tips and recommendations given by a word of mouth or rumor. Although people trust experts and their closed circle more (Fig. 1), there is no guarantee not to meet the discussed above web-services in online space and unconsciously become its active and trustful reader.

Fig. 1 Consumers’ trust in information sources-EU wide (source: Etienne et al., 2018)

The upgrowing trend of social media usage and their development divert people from traditional sources and approaches to health and cure. Although tracing linkages in online networks allows to find out the initial source, hardly every user will do that. Moreover, the absence of traditional hallmarks challenges network and social media scientists that is why a user is responsible for its personal information consumption (Westerman et al., 2014). Also, it should be remembered that the original source is also referred to something, and there is still a risk of a verification scarcity.
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['Medicine', 'Information Technology', 'Healthy Living', 'Health']