Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to Misinformation

Social media is one of the most dominant ways of spreading information. Still, unfortunately, these open platforms provide ways to spreading misinformation which can be extremely dangerous, especially when relevant to sensitive issues such as health-related information. Hence such platforms require...

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Main Authors: Melanie McCord, Fahmida Hamid
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: LibraryPress@UF 2023-05-01
Series:Proceedings of the International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference
Online Access:https://journals.flvc.org/FLAIRS/article/view/133364
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author Melanie McCord
Fahmida Hamid
author_facet Melanie McCord
Fahmida Hamid
author_sort Melanie McCord
collection DOAJ
description Social media is one of the most dominant ways of spreading information. Still, unfortunately, these open platforms provide ways to spreading misinformation which can be extremely dangerous, especially when relevant to sensitive issues such as health-related information. Hence such platforms require an effective autonomous misinformation detection mechanism. Understanding the data is one of the necessary artifacts for building such a mechanism. In this work, we attempted to determine the medical relevancy of cancer-related tweets and explore whether they contain misinformation. We created a dataset of roughly 500 tweets and labeled them according to their medical relevance: medically relevant, not medically relevant, or unrelated to cancer. We ran logistic regression and support vector machine models on them. The highest proportion of correctly identified “medically relevant” tweets, i.e., accuracy, was 0.795. Our analysis hints at some features and factors that can automatically improve cancer-relevant and non-relevant tweet detection.
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spelling doaj-art-ca50e7cc214e4437aa3b6bc2b3ca39d22025-08-20T01:52:22ZengLibraryPress@UFProceedings of the International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference2334-07542334-07622023-05-013610.32473/flairs.36.13336469670Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to MisinformationMelanie McCord0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6467-3536Fahmida Hamid1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2344-6297New College of FloridaNew College of FloridaSocial media is one of the most dominant ways of spreading information. Still, unfortunately, these open platforms provide ways to spreading misinformation which can be extremely dangerous, especially when relevant to sensitive issues such as health-related information. Hence such platforms require an effective autonomous misinformation detection mechanism. Understanding the data is one of the necessary artifacts for building such a mechanism. In this work, we attempted to determine the medical relevancy of cancer-related tweets and explore whether they contain misinformation. We created a dataset of roughly 500 tweets and labeled them according to their medical relevance: medically relevant, not medically relevant, or unrelated to cancer. We ran logistic regression and support vector machine models on them. The highest proportion of correctly identified “medically relevant” tweets, i.e., accuracy, was 0.795. Our analysis hints at some features and factors that can automatically improve cancer-relevant and non-relevant tweet detection.https://journals.flvc.org/FLAIRS/article/view/133364
spellingShingle Melanie McCord
Fahmida Hamid
Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to Misinformation
Proceedings of the International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference
title Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to Misinformation
title_full Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to Misinformation
title_fullStr Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to Misinformation
title_full_unstemmed Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to Misinformation
title_short Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Its Relation to Misinformation
title_sort medical relevancy of cancer related tweets and its relation to misinformation
url https://journals.flvc.org/FLAIRS/article/view/133364
work_keys_str_mv AT melaniemccord medicalrelevancyofcancerrelatedtweetsanditsrelationtomisinformation
AT fahmidahamid medicalrelevancyofcancerrelatedtweetsanditsrelationtomisinformation