Hot MedFax

Did you know that relying on social media for news can . . .cause you more stress? Exposure to high rates of conflicting information, which you find on social media, during an emergency is linked to increased levels of stress, and those who rely on text messages or social media reports from unofficial sources are more frequently exposed to rumors and experience greater distress, according to research led by the University of California, Irvine, newswise.com reports.  “During a crisis situation, like a school shooting or lock-down, people often seek to stay informed about what’s happening. However, when announcements and updates from official channels are lacking or irregular, there’s a high risk that rumors will fill the void,” says principal investigator Roxane Cohen Silver, UCI professor of psychology & social behavior. “We wanted to explore how people coped with ambiguity during a campus lockdown and how a communications vacuum could lead to rumor generation, rumor tran...

I'll never forget the day my son's high school had a bomb scare.  I happened to get a text from a neighborhood group that something was going on at the school.  Perhaps because I'm a journalist, I immediately called our local newspaper to see what was going on. Thankfully, it was a hoax, but now a new study says that I'm in the minority.  In a crisis, we're far more likely to look to others to second-guess what authorities have to say, when it's an environmental or health scare, according to newswise.com. And the authorities want to know why. Given the rapidly changing reality of digital alternatives to any single information source, government agencies, medical professionals, and others increasingly want to understand what motivates people to seek, or to avoid seeking, information about threats and crises.  For their study, researchers used data from 1,000 randomly selected Dutch citizens who were interviewed by phone about their responses to eight ...