In recent years, people have increasingly referred to the Web and social media as sources of information about health-related problems and solutions, as confirmed by the U.S. Pew Research Center, and other European and international studies. Although, on the one hand, these platforms favor easier and more direct access to information sources by users without the intermediation of experts, on the other hand, it is precisely such democratization of health information that constitutes a potential danger for people. As we have seen especially in the last period, linked to the pandemic, the proliferation of false information, conspiracy theories, and unreliable remedies risk compromising the health not only of individuals, but that of the community as a whole.
It is in this perspective that it becomes necessary to study and propose technological solutions to help users come into contact with reliable information, especially in a critical domain such as health.
For this reason, the topics of interest of the Workshop include, but are not limited to:
- Assessing the genuineness of Online Health Information (OHI);
- Consumer Health Search (CHS) and genuine information access;
- Debunking health misinformation;
- Fake news/rumors and healthcare;
- Measures, evaluation methods, and datasets for health misinformation detection;
- Health misinformation detection;
- Health literacy and information genuineness;
- Fact-checking in Online Health Information (OHI);
- Misinformation and public opinion on health;
- Relationship between access to non-genuine information and danger to public health;
- Relationship between psychological characteristics and perceptions of health misinformation;
- Techniques for accessing and retrieving genuine Online Health Information (OHI).