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Record W4409230098 · doi:10.1371/journal.pdig.0000802

Evaluation of a Canadian social media platform for communicating perinatal health information during a pandemic

2025· article· en· W4409230098 on OpenAlexafffundabout
Gemma Postill, Neesha Hussain‐Shamsy, Stephanie Dephoure, Alison Wong, Eliane M. Shore, Jeanette Cooper, Negin Pak, Christine Fahim, Danielle Kasperavicius, Tali Bogler

Bibliographic record

VenuePLOS Digital Health · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicMisinformation and Its Impacts
Canadian institutionsSt. Michael's HospitalUniversity of Toronto
FundersTemerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
KeywordsSocial mediaPandemicLeverage (statistics)Public healthInformation DisseminationCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)DisseminationMedicineHealth communicationSocial media analyticsHealth careHealth informationPublic relationsEnvironmental healthBusinessNursingPolitical scienceComputer scienceInfectious disease (medical specialty)PathologyDiseaseWorld Wide Web

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Social media platforms, such as Instagram, are increasingly used as a source of health information; however, it is unclear how to effectively leverage these platforms during public health emergencies. @PandemicPregnancyGuide (PPG) was an Instagram account created by Canadian physicians to provide perinatal health information during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a cross-sectional survey, and assessed Instagram analytics, to determine how and why users followed PPG and its impact on health decision-making. Respondents most valued posts explaining scientific articles in lay language and the delivery of content by medical experts. Topics of greatest interest were COVID-19 vaccination while pregnant (76%), COVID-19 infection during pregnancy (71%), and labour and delivery during the pandemic (69%). Respondents self-reported being more likely to use COVID-19 protective measures while pregnant (80%), receive COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy (87%), and vaccinate their children against COVID-19 (58%) due to the information shared by PPG. Taken together, we demonstrate how healthcare professionals can effectively leverage social media to disseminate health information and improve uptake of public health recommendations. We recommend consideration of our findings in the development of future health-based social media platforms, particularly during public health emergencies or campaigns.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.015
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.058
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.241
Threshold uncertainty score0.484

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0150.058
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0050.001
Scholarly communication0.0040.003
Open science0.0020.003
Research integrity0.0020.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.139
GPT teacher head0.394
Teacher spread0.254 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

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Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

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