Medical blog content and relationship with blogger credentials and blog host

A quantitative content analysis was performed on 398 blog posts from a constructed 1-week sample of posts in WebMD, Yahoo!Health Expert Blogs, and independently hosted blogs.

Most health and medical blog posts highlighted and provided commentary pertaining to medical issues found in external media such as books, television, Web sites, magazines, and newspapers

Only 16% contained actual health or medical information.

Distinct differences in patterns of content were evident between credentialed and noncredentialed bloggers, as well as different blog hosts.

References:
Health and medical blog content and its relationships with blogger credentials and blog host. Buis LR, Carpenter S. Health Commun. 2009 Dec;24(8):703-10.

Comments from Google Buzz:

Shabber Hussain - Now if I can some how know about those 16% medical blogs that "contain actual health or medical information", it should make my day. Feb 26

Arin Basu - I think (I just read the abstract perhaps a closer reading of the full text of the article might be more useful, @Ves, did you have a chance to read the full text?)

* The findings are not unexpected, at least that's what you expect based on "credentialing the blogger who has written the posts"

* There seems on first reading at leas the abstract that there may be quite a bit of bias in that study (just one week snapshot (too few blogs sampled), few selected sites (selection bias right there), and interpretation)

* Not surprised that most blogs contained commentaries published in popular press and journals.

I think that's what blogs should ideally do. Raise awareness, enable and alert people to read & interpret meanings. I'd not expect blogs to replace "actual" texts (well, that's my perspective)

* Which makes @Shabber's point very pertinent, what are those 16% saying, on a one week selective sampling?

All in all, a very interesting article. I think it needs to be closely read and discussed in medical blogosphere. Feb 26

Image source: public domain.