Credibility And Influence Assessment For Health And Medical Blogs

Purpose and Meaning:Blog is an important source of health and medical information with its simple operation, and rapidly spreading. Currently, as the relationship between the credibility and influence of information is not clear, while facing those blogs with high hits, the user is likely to be misled by the outdated or false information. Therefore, it is particularly important for the assessment of the relationship between the credibility and influence of health and medical blogs.Objective:A quantitative content analysis was performed on571blogs from a Consecutive1-year sample of blog posts in39health blogs. The relationship between posting purposes, various health and medical topics, credibility indicators, and blog influence was evaluated. Combined with the level of credibility and influence, we picked out the different topics blogs with high credibility and high influence from the sample blogs to meet the varied information needs of different readers, as well as to provide some improvement strategies of improving the utilization of network information for blog website providers. In addition, explore the structure of the39health blogsophere and mode of communication, in order to make suggestions on better communication between bloggers. Finally, this study consulted the foreign studies about blog evaluation indicators and methods in the domestic health and medical blogs, this exploratory research provides the theoretical and practical reference for the evaluation of health and medical blogs.Methods:After a literature research and a survey on blogs, subject s classification, purposes for posting, credibility indicators and influence indicators were confirmed. Content analysis, Mathematical Statistics and Social Network Analysis (SNA) were used to analyze the relationship between indicators; based on the use of expert scoring method to determine the index weight, and finally picked out the different topics blogs with high credibility and high influence.Results:(1) only50%of blogs published four posts and above each month, and the overall information was a little. Discussing general health and medical topics was the primary purpose (47.86%),37.95%of the sampled blogs posts contained medical information. In addition, only3.33%of posts contained responses to external media. Posts contained diseases information mainly related to chronic non-communicable diseases (such as cancer, diabetes) and age-prone diseases. Posts contained infectious diseases were less reported.(2) Most bloggers were health professionals (73.4%), the majority of bloggers were willing to disclose their posts (63%), full names (76.0%), gender (87%) and Contact ways (42.0%) to make information transparency. The purposes for blogging and themes of the blog were varied by bloggers with different occupations.(3) The interaction between bloggers and readers was uneven. Readers actively participated in reading, but rarely gave comments.90.69%(3127/3448) of all links are reciprocal in health blogsophere; bloggers focusing on different topics exchanged information by blogroll links. Some individuals like doctors and psychological counselors were the opinion leaders, but the doctor groups in readers and blogsophere have relatively lower influence than other occupations groups. On the contrary, those occupations unknown and noncredentialed media workers have high influence in the blogsophere and among readers.(4) As we can see from the arrangement of blogs with different themes, the influence of bloggers online and offline mutually reinforced with each other.Conclusion:(1) A wide range of topics in39health and medical blogs were concerned, mainly provide services of specific medical information and general health and medical problems, rather than play a role of news media.(2) Half of the health and medical blogs had realized the importance of the information transparency of bloggers and posts, but fail to realize the importance of information sources.(3) Indicators evaluating the credibility is proportional to the credibility of a blog.(4) The relationship between the credibility of a blog and the purpose for blogging was significant, with a moderate level of association.(5) The overall health and medical blogs weren’t active, but some elite blogs were highly active.(6) Most of Health and medical blogs can affect large numbers of readers, but not in-depth; cognitive level of bloggers is high in the blogosphere.(7) There were some elite blogs occupying the center position of the network, which hold the right to speak of the blogosphere; most of blogs with high credibility also had high influence.(8) The indicators and scores evaluating health and medical blogs in this study have a certain degree of agreement with blog hits. There are8figures,20tables,139references in this study.Suggestion:(1) Doctors should shoulder the important task of medical and health information communication, and actively involve in it, to enhance the overall influence of blogs.(2) The "gatekeeper" should strengthen the monitor of medical and health information on blogs to ensure the quality of the information.(3) Medical bloggers should take the real-name system, and blog readers should make a good use of the indicators in this study to determine the credibility of a blog.(4) We would like to invite more and more researchers should to join in research of blog evaluation, in order to establish a comprehensive evaluation index system.(5) Improve the management level, the hardware and software construction of website of "blog.39.net".