ArticleZeitschrift fur Gesundheitswissenschaften = Journal of public health2022
Debunking health myths on the internet: the persuasive effect of (visual) online communication.
Article in Zeitschrift fur Gesundheitswissenschaften = Journal of public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Investigating the Impact of Online Abortion Myths on Health Care Providers and Advocates: Interview Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Article
- Generative AI-Assisted Microlearning for Erectile Dysfunction Myth Reduction: Single-Center Pre-Post Quasi-Experimental Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Changing the fate of rangelands through behavioral nudges for sustainable land use and management using an extended theory of planned behavior.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Strategies to correct vaccine misinformation on social media for pregnant women and the impact of vaccine skepticism.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Bypassing as a non-confrontational influence strategy.Current opinion in psychology · 2024Review
- You must be myths-taken: Examining belief in falsehoods during the COVID-19 health crisis.PloS one · 2024Article
- COVID-19 misinformation on YouTube: An analysis of its impact and subsequent online information searches for verification.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Aim: Developing evidence-based recommendations on how to debunk health-related misinformation and more specific health myths in (online) communication is important for individual health and the society. The present study investigated the effects of debunking/correction texts created according to the latest research findings with regard to four different health myths on recipients' belief, behaviour and feelings regarding the myths. Further, the study investigated the effects of different visualisations (machine-technical created image, diagram, image of an expert, message without an image) in the debunking texts. Subject and methods: A representative sample of German Internet users ( Results: The results show that receiving an online news article that refutes a widespread health myth with or without the use of an image can significantly change the attitudes of the recipients toward this myth. The most influential variable was the attributed credibility: the more credible a debunking text is for a recipient, the more corrective effectiveness it has. However, the corrective messages did not differ in their persuasive effects depending on the image types used. Conclusion: The results offer an optimistic outlook on the correction of health-related misinformation and especially health myths and insight into why and how people change their beliefs (or not) and how beliefs in health myths can be reduced. The findings can be used by journalists, scientists, doctors and many other actors for efficient (online) communication. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-022-01694-3.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.