To share or not to share: The role of epistemic belief in online health rumors

• Published in: International journal of medical informatics (Shannon, Ireland) Ireland), 2017-12, Vol.108, p.36-41
• Main Authors: Chua, Alton Y.K., Banerjee, Snehasish
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Consumer Health Information - utilization; Culture; Epistemic belief; Female; Health care; Humans; Information Dissemination; Information science; Internet - utilization; Male; Online healthcare community; Rumor diffusion; Social media; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1386-5056; 1872-8243
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2017.08.010

•Epistemic belief significantly affected users’ decision to share online health rumors.•Textual rumors were shared more often than pictorial ones.•The decision to share was no different between true and false rumors as well as between dread and wish rumors. This paper investigates the role of epistemic belief in affecting Internet users’ decision to share online health rumors. To delve deeper, it examines how the characteristics of rumors—true or false, textual or pictorial, dread or wish—shape the decision-making among epistemologically naïve and robust users separately. An experiment was conducted. Responses were obtained from 110 participants, who were exposed to eight rumors. This yielded 880 cases (110 participants×8 rumors) for statistical analyses. Epistemologically naive participants were more likely to share online health rumors than epistemologically robust individuals. Epistemologically robust participants were more likely to share textual rumors than pictorial ones. However, there were no differences between true and false rumors or between dread and wish rumors for either epistemologically naive or robust participants. This paper contributes to the understanding of users’ health information sharing behavior. It encourages users to cultivate robust epistemic belief in order to improve their online health information processing skills.