Online information on face masks: analysis of websites in Italian and English returned by different search engines.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Countries have major differences in the acceptance of face mask use for the prevention of COVID-19. This work aims at studying the information online in different countries in terms of information quality and content.

Design

Content analysis.

Method

We analysed 450 webpages returned by searching the string 'are face masks dangerous' in Italy, the UK and the USA using three search engines (Bing, Duckduckgo and Google) in August 2020. The type of website and the stance about masks were assessed by two raters for each language and inter-rater agreement reported as Cohen's kappa. The text of the webpages was collected from the web using WebBootCaT and analysed using a corpus analysis software to identify issues mentioned.

Results

Most pages were news outl

SUBMITTER: Mehta S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8275368 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature