Use of and Trust in Health Information on the Internet among the Finnish Population

Stefan Ek
Abo Akademi University, Abo, Finland

The present day society has a potential and pronounced strategies for a development where global information networks and interactive media constitute positive tools in view of a healthier and more active life for every citizen. The optimists in late modern society claim that the gap between the information rich and the information poor will diminish as the WWW-culture keeps spreading. Optimistic decision-makers consider this as a new opportunity to create comprehensibility, manageability, meaningfulness and healthier life styles across all social classes. The Internet has a big potential as an empowering tool and a great equaliser, putting the socially alienated groups of citizens on an equal footing with other people. However, it is also predicted that the Internet might broaden the social inequality and widen social gaps. The digital divide might cause the disadvantaged groups to become increasingly left behind. It is to be feared that the population groups who are unable or unwilling to use modern information technology will be isolated from the increasingly predominant way of communicating, working and living in the society.

Elderly and persons belonging to the lower social groups use the Internet less than younger people and socially more established groups, but the reason has been found to be mainly access difficulties. The problem is expected to be attenuated as the use of the web stabilises. As more people will be connected, many of the health-promoting interactions with the citizens will take place through electronic devices rather than through personal contacts and the Internet has, indeed, quickly become a communication technology used by an estimated 408 million people worldwide. Electronic technology affects personal information infrastructures at all levels: physically (different motor movements), cognitively (complexity and speed), and emotionally (stress and intellectual productivity). It offers a vast amount of information regarding health and medical issues, with web sources representing the whole spectrum from reputable and controlled medical information - offered through governmental or educational gateways - to uncontrolled and uncontrollable web sites of a personal, commercial or ideological nature. Additionally, professional medical literature is available free in various full-text electronic journals, as well as on the Medline database, which contains abstracts from over 4000 peer-reviewed journals. The primary purpose of most health sites on the web is consumer education and marketing. In August 2000 an estimated 40.9 million people sought health information on the Internet and in 2005 their number is predicted to reach 88.5 million.

Particularly the use of the Internet in the health education of the population has been widely acknowledged. When the capacity of the web will further increase, the Internet is predicted to become the main link within professional medical groups and between them and the citizens. According to predictions medical problems will often be dealt with at home and the treatments will become preventive rather than crisis solving.

Within the field of public health information, mass media channels have proven capable of reaching and informing large audiences, but when it comes to changing attitudes and modifying health practices, interpersonal channels have been more successful, as they provide immediate feedback and social support. The Internet can, in fact, be seen as a hybrid channel, combining the positive attributes of both interpersonal and mass communication. It thus becomes more than merely a new means of disseminating medical news; it is also an information environment where the traditional roles and interrelationships of medical professionals, journalists, corporations and ordinary citizens are changing; and where the health information consumers enjoy increasing control over the selection, dissemination, and even the interpretation of health news.