Information Wars: The era of massive digital misinformation. The footprint of tobacco industry in social media and mobile health

摘要

Internet and mobile technologies are nowadays used by most of the world population. These technologies are not just available for highly engaging and for many people an essential tool in their daily life. Not surprisingly, the use of mobile health and online health for smoking cessation is quite well studied and evidence shows they can be cost-effective. However, the tobacco industry is also leveraging the power of those channels for mass communication. Furthermore, we will explore how bogus smoking cessation "treatments", such as auto-hypnosis, are being promoted in apps stores or social media. Overall, we will study user cases on how social media and mobile technology has been used to promote harmful public health messages. These case studies will be used to provide some guidelines on how to create strategies to use social technologies such as mobile apps and social networks to promote smoking cessation and increase awareness about tobacco risks. This presentation will also be based on our experience from the project SmokeFreeBrain where we combined online and mobile technologies for smoking cessation.