2020/06/18 by Dean Schillinger, Deepti Chittamuru, A. Susana Ramírez · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social Media and Politics #Social Media in Health Education
paper · doi:10.2105/ajph.2020.305746
openalex publication_date 2020/06/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Despite the ubiquity of health-related communications via social media, no consensus has emerged on whether this medium, on balance, jeopardizes or promotes public health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has been described as the source of a toxic "infodemic" or a valuable tool for public health. No conceptual model exists for examining the roles that social media can play with respect to population health.We present a novel framework to guide the investigation and assessment of the effects of social media on public health: the SPHERE (Social media and Public Health Epidemic and REsponse) continuum. This model illustrates the functions of social media across the epidemic-response continuum, ranging across contagion, vector, surveillance, inoculant, disease control, and treatment.We also describe attributes of the communications, diseases and pathogens, and hosts that influence whether certain functions dominate over others. Finally, we describe a comprehensive set of outcomes relevant to the evaluation of the effects of social media on the public's health.