Seeking and sharing health information online

Abstract

Search engines and social media are two of the most com-monly used online services; in this paper, we examine how users appropriate these platforms for online health activi-ties via both large-scale log analysis and a survey of 210 people. While users often turn to search engines to learn about serious or highly stigmatic conditions, a surprising amount of sensitive health information is also sought and shared via social media, in our case the public social plat-form Twitter. We contrast what health content people seek via search engines vs. share on social media, as well as why they choose a particular platform for online health activi-ties. We reflect on the implications of our results for design-ing search engines, social media, and social search tools that better support people's health information seeking and sharing needs.