World Health Organization Is Losing Public Credibility Towards Health-Sensitive Topics: Infodemiological Analysis of Facebook Users' Reactions

Résumé

Background The scientific infodemic constitutes one of the greatest threats to public health and safety today. The credibility of the main dissemination agencies is an essential tool for adhering to measures to preserve public health.Methods Reactions such as “like,” “love,” “affection,” “surprise,” “sadness,” “anger,” and “derision” were collected under World Health Organization Facebook posts on climate change (from 2019 to 2022) and vaccines (from 2021 to 2022). Descriptive statistics, linear regression, and correlation methods were implemented to identify possible trends and causal relationships with the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.Results These findings showed a worrying increase in derision reactions about climate change-related posts (up to 22% in November 2022, with a quadratically growing trend over time since December 2020). Furthermore, infodemic reactions such as anger and especially derision made up the majority of emotional reactions to vaccine-related posts since 2021 and up to 44% of total reactions in November 2022 (median since July 2021 = 9%, IQR: 4% - 14 %). Finally, there is evidence of a causal correlation between the start of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign and public distrust towards the WHO, even for issues unrelated to vaccines such as climate change. Conclusion These findings signal that the World Health Organization is losing public credibility towards extremely relevant issues for global health. Infodemiological interventions in accordance with the recent literature are urgently required.

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