Abstract:

Social media is currently among the most popular web activities among dental professionals. The study aimed to assess social media usage, knowledge about misinformation, infodemic and fact-checking among dental professionals on dental information. The current study design was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted among dental professionals from Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire comprised demographic data of study participants and knowledge about misinformation, infodemic and fact-checking about social media use for their dental profession. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis. A total of 1192 dental practitioners responded to the questionnaire. In our study, most participating dentists were young and had 1-5 years of experience (51%). Most participants responded that sometimes (49%), they fact-check social media content about dental information. The google is the most used to check the fact content. About 90% of dentists never received notification about factual errors. The knowledge about misinformation and fact-checking is moderate among dental practitioners.

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