Opinion: To combat misinformation online, public health experts should partner with content creators
To counter videos on social media platforms that promote health pseudoscience, public health practitioners should collaborate with creators by providing them with accurate information, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health experts.
In an August 26 Boston Globe opinion piece, Monica Wang, adjunct associate professor of health policy and management, and Matt Motta, faculty research affiliate, discussed strategies to fight videos containing misinformation—such as ads for untested weight-loss supplements that target women, young girls, and people of color.
“If public health wants to compete with misinformation, it must stop treating social media as the enemy and start partnering with it as an ally,” they wrote.
Wang and Motta described how they partnered with the Center for Health Communication’s Creator Program to work with TikTok and Instagram creators. The researchers provided creators with evidence-based information on weight-loss supplements. As a result, the creators’ content shifted to include more accurate facts about supplements’ potential harms, and was much more likely to report that these supplements don’t require pre-market approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The authors noted that scientists do not necessarily need to become influencers themselves. “What we can do is partner with those who already know how to reach large, diverse audiences and equip them with content that’s credible, clear, and engaging,” they wrote. “In the right hands, [social media] can be a powerful channel to improve health communication and shift perspectives, behaviors, and health at scale.”
Read the Boston Globe opinion piece: How public health can compete with misinformation
