Content analysis of false information about dental caries published on facebook

• Grant number: 23/03074-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2023
• End date: June 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Dentistry - Pediatric Dentistry
• Principal Investigator: Thiago Cruvinel da Silva
• Grantee: Rafaela Lopes Chacon
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru (FOB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Due to the digital revolution that has occurred in recent decades, access to information has been democratized, including health information. However, content often presents false information that can negatively influence people's beliefs, leading to adverse public health consequences. Thus, the present study aims to analyze the content of Facebook users' posts in Portuguese containing true and false information about dental caries. After the initial reading of the posts, two independent evaluators will assign specific codes to the textual passages according to their themes. A list of codes will be developed based on the identified themes. Discrepancies observed between the coding of different evaluators will be discussed until consensus is reached. Thematic nodes and sub-nodes that emerge from the aggregation of significant textual passages, coded in a similar way, will be represented by conceptual maps, hierarchy graphs, cluster analysis, and decision trees. The sentence length, co-frequency index, most frequent words, and type-token ratio will be determined for the entire database and for dichotomized groups related to the factuality of the information and the age, gender, educational level, income, and race of the authors of the content