Estimating the Reliability of Health-related Search Results

Determining reliability of online data is a challenge that has recently received increasing attention. In particular, unreliable health-related content has become pervasive during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of this Ph.D. thesis is to study how end-users judge the correctness and credibility of online content and provide them with a series of tools to assist them in assessing content reliability. To that end, we need to determine which sources of evidence may help to better assess the reliability of health-related online content, and how to combine them. Moreover, I also intend to analyse which elements of Social Media can help detect misinformation. This thesis will also focus on which types of Social Media users are more likely to believe misinformation. Finally, I will also study which presentation aspects might help end-users to better assess reliability since previous research has proved that the format and layout of the information items, combined with user-based biases, influence their final assessments

keywords: Reliability, Health-related results, Helping users