IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0237144.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Predictive modeling for trustworthiness and other subjective text properties in online nutrition and health communication

Author

Listed:
  • Janne Kauttonen
  • Jenni Hannukainen
  • Pia Tikka
  • Jyrki Suomala

Abstract

While the internet has democratized and accelerated content creation and sharing, it has also made people more vulnerable to manipulation and misinformation. Also, the received information can be distorted by psychological biases. This is problematic especially in health-related communications which can greatly affect the quality of life of individuals. We assembled and analyzed 364 texts related to nutrition and health from Finnish online sources, such as news, columns and blogs, and asked non-experts to subjectively evaluate the texts. Texts were rated for their trustworthiness, sentiment, logic, information, clarity, and neutrality properties. We then estimated individual biases and consensus ratings that were used in training regression models. Firstly, we found that trustworthiness was significantly correlated to the information, neutrality and logic of the texts. Secondly, individual ratings for information and logic were significantly biased by the age and diet of the raters. Our best regression models explained up to 70% of the total variance of consensus ratings based on the low-level properties of texts, such as semantic embeddings, presence of key-terms and part-of-speech tags, references, quotes and paragraphs. With a novel combination of crowdsourcing, behavioral analysis, natural language processing and predictive modeling, our study contributes to the automated identification of reliable and high-quality online information. While critical evaluation of truthfulness cannot be surrendered to the machine only, our findings provide new insights into automated evaluation of subjective text properties and analysis of morphologically-rich languages in regards to trustworthiness.

Suggested Citation

  • Janne Kauttonen & Jenni Hannukainen & Pia Tikka & Jyrki Suomala, 2020. "Predictive modeling for trustworthiness and other subjective text properties in online nutrition and health communication," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-23, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0237144
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237144
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237144&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0237144?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wu, Zhihao & Lin, Youfang & Wan, Huaiyu & Tian, Shengfeng & Hu, Keyun, 2012. "Efficient overlapping community detection in huge real-world networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(7), pages 2475-2490.
    2. Dan M. Kahan & Hank Jenkins-Smith & Donald Braman, 2011. "Cultural cognition of scientific consensus," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 147-174, February.
    3. Sunghan Kim & David Goldstein & Lynn Hasher & Rose T. Zacks, 2005. "Framing Effects in Younger and Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 60(4), pages 215-218.
    4. Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia & Prashant Shiralkar & Luis M Rocha & Johan Bollen & Filippo Menczer & Alessandro Flammini, 2015. "Computational Fact Checking from Knowledge Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-13, June.
    5. Gray, Nicola J. & Klein, Jonathan D. & Noyce, Peter R. & Sesselberg, Tracy S. & Cantrill, Judith A., 2005. "Health information-seeking behaviour in adolescence: the place of the internet," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 1467-1478, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lu, Xi & Mo, Hongming & Deng, Yong, 2015. "An evidential opinion dynamics model based on heterogeneous social influential power," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 98-107.
    2. Roger D. Magarey & Christina M. Trexler, 2020. "Information: a missing component in understanding and mitigating social epidemics," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Graziella Bonanno & Marino De Luca, 2025. "Unravelling Myths: A Difference-In-Differences Analysis of Post-Vaccination Mortality in Italy During COVID-19," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 1137-1177, February.
    4. Alina Duduciuc, 2014. "Teenagers And The Use Of New Technologies (Ict) For Health Information," Studies and Scientific Researches. Economics Edition, "Vasile Alecsandri" University of Bacau, Faculty of Economic Sciences, issue 20.
    5. Sedona Chinn & P. Sol Hart, 2021. "Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 167(3), pages 1-21, August.
    6. Michael D. Jones, 2014. "Cultural Characters and Climate Change: How Heroes Shape Our Perception of Climate Science," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(1), pages 1-39, March.
    7. Bazzi, Samuel & Fiszbein, Martin & Gebresilasse, Mesay, 2021. "“Rugged individualism” and collective (in)action during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    8. Daniela Salite, 2019. "Explaining the uncertainty: understanding small-scale farmers’ cultural beliefs and reasoning of drought causes in Gaza Province, Southern Mozambique," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 36(3), pages 427-441, September.
    9. Janice Y. Jung & Barbara A. Mellers, 2016. "American attitudes toward nudges," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 11(1), pages 62-74, January.
    10. Kauder, Björn & Potrafke, Niklas & Ursprung, Heinrich, 2018. "Behavioral determinants of proclaimed support for environment protection policies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 26-41.
    11. Donatella Baiardi, 2021. "What do you think about climate change?," Working Papers 477, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2021.
    12. D'Amato, Alessio & Giaccherini, Matilde & Zoli, Mariangela, 2019. "The Role of Information Sources and Providers in Shaping Green Behaviors. Evidence from Europe," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Elizabeth Suhay & James N. Druckman, 2015. "The Politics of Science," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 658(1), pages 6-15, March.
    14. repec:plo:pone00:0161485 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Philip E. Tetlock & Gregory Mitchell & L. Jason Anastasopoulos, 2013. "Detecting and Punishing Unconscious Bias," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 83-110.
    16. Paul R. Hindsley & O. Ashton Morgan, 2022. "The Role of Cultural Worldviews in Willingness to Pay for Environmental Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 81(2), pages 243-269, February.
    17. Lorraine Whitmarsh & Dimitrios Xenias & Christopher R. Jones, 2019. "Framing effects on public support for carbon capture and storage," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-10, December.
    18. Michael J. Weir & Thomas W. Sproul, 2019. "Identifying Drivers of Genetically Modified Seafood Demand: Evidence from a Choice Experiment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-21, July.
    19. Shang, Ronghua & Luo, Shuang & Zhang, Weitong & Stolkin, Rustam & Jiao, Licheng, 2016. "A multiobjective evolutionary algorithm to find community structures based on affinity propagation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 453(C), pages 203-227.
    20. Adam Wilke & Lois Morton, 2015. "Climatologists’ patterns of conveying climate science to the agricultural community," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 32(1), pages 99-110, March.
    21. Hindsley, Paul & McEvoy, David M. & Morgan, O. Ashton, 2020. "Consumer Demand for Ethical Products and the Role of Cultural Worldviews: The Case of Direct-Trade Coffee," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0237144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.