Cher Readers: All ways here are my ways. Control your Flamingo.
Abstract
As people increasingly turn to social media to access and create health evidence, the greater availability of data and information ought to help more people make evidence-informed health decisions that align with what matters to them. However, questions remain as to whether people can be swayed in favor of or against options by polarized social media, particularly in the case of controversial topics. We created a composite mock news article about home birth from six real news articles and randomly assigned participants in an online study to view comments posted about the original six articles. We found that exposure to one-sided social media comments with one-sided opinions influenced participants’ opinions of the health topic regardless of their reported level of previous knowledge, especially when comments contained personal stories. Comments representing a breadth of views did not influence opinions, which suggests that while exposure to one-sided comments may bias opinions, exposure to balanced comments may avoid such bias
Song: “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”
Related Poem Content Details
(from Cymbeline)Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,Nor the furious winter’s rages;Thou thy worldly task hast done,Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:Golden lads and girls all must,As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.Fear no more the frown o’ the great;Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;Care no more to clothe and eat;To thee the reed is as the oak:The scepter, learning, physic, mustAll follow this, and come to dust.Fear no more the lightning flash,Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;Fear not slander, censure rash;Thou hast finished joy and moan:All lovers young, all lovers mustConsign to thee, and come to dust.No exorciser harm thee!Nor no witchcraft charm thee!Ghost unlaid forbear thee!Nothing ill come near thee!Quiet consummation have;And renownèd be thy grave!
