Health discussions on the Internet: A study of knowledge communication through citations |
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| Authors: | Marianne Wikgren |
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| Institution: | Department of Information Studies, Åbo Akademi University, Tavastgatan 13, FIN-20500 Åbo, Finland |
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| Abstract: | The Internet is a convenient but complex source for health information used by an increasing number of health consumers. Especially for people suffering from a chronic illness (e.g., diabetes), information seeking forms a part of the daily management of the disease, a “project of life.” This study of Web texts examines the citation patterns for a specific and controversial health issue: the beneficial or hazardous use of dietary chromium supplementation in diabetes self-management. Texts from different categories of Web sources (scientific, professional, educational, and commercial sources, as well as diabetes discussion groups) were analyzed in order to study how knowledge is transferred between sources, and how diabetics participating in discussion groups refer to and make sense of the information from different sources on the Internet. The citation patterns suggest that deviations from the traditional models of scientific knowledge dissemination can occur in the Internet environment. |
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