Read in full:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/when-health-misinformation-kills-social-media-visi...
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Dr Rachael Kent, Senior Lecturer in Digital Economy & Society Education, calls for robust regulation of health content on social media.
The recent BBC report on the death of 23-year-old Paloma Shemirani, who refused chemotherapy for a treatable cancer, offers a devastating example of how conspiracy theories – amplified and legitimised online – can cost lives. Her brothers have courageously spoken out, placing blame not only on their mother’s extreme anti-medicine beliefs but on the broader ecosystem that allowed those views to flourish unchecked. Their plea is simple: no one else should have to die like Paloma did.
This story is not just a personal tragedy – it reflects the systemic failure of our digital health information landscape. As I’ve argued in both my book, The Digital Health Self (2023), and my Anthropology & Medicine journal article, (In)visibility of Health and Illness: Instagram as an Unregulated Public Health Platform (2024), we are living through a credibility crisis in health communication – one shaped by platform capitalism, emotional visibility, and the absence of meaningful regulation...
In my research, I’ve shown how health and illness are performed online in ways that prioritise visibility, productivity, and moral worth. The result is a distorted credibility arena where influencers can market unproven therapies to millions with little oversight.
And this is the heart of the problem: there is no regulation... If social media platforms continue to profit from health misinformation without regulatory intervention, we will see more deaths like Paloma’s. We urgently need systemic change: robust regulation of health content, transparent algorithms, accountability for influencers, and digital literacy strategies that go beyond fact-checking to address the emotional and aesthetic dimensions of misinformation...
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COMMENT (NPW): Rachael Kent articulates a huge problem: health misinformation thrives on social media, and many people believe it, with potentially devastating consequences. Her paper '(In) visibility of health and illness: Instagram as an unregulated public health platform' argues that 'Instagram has evolved into an informal, unregulated public health platform'. In the current article, she calls for 'robust regulation'.
How might such regulation be implemented in practice?
I would argue that regulation is important but is not the only way to reduce the harms of misinformation. It is also important, for example, to empower people to differentiate misinformation from accurate imformation. A parallel focus on improving the availability and use of reliable healthcare information is also required.
What do you think?
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org