Factors Affecting Physicians' Credibility on Twitter When Sharing Health Information: Online Experimental Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Largely absent from research on how users appraise the credibility of professionals as sources for the information they find on social media is work investigating factors shaping credibility within a specific profession, such as physicians.

Objective

We address debates about how physicians can show their credibility on social media depending on whether they employ a formal or casual appearance in their profile picture. Using prominence-interpretation theory, we posit that formal appearance will affect perceived credibility based on users' social context-specifically, whether they have a regular health care provider.

Methods

For this experiment, we recruited 205 social media users using Amazon Mechanical Turk. We asked participants if they had a regular heal

SUBMITTER: Ferrell D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9987183 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan-Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature