Last fall, a trio of researchers from the Rijeka School of Medicine in Croatia published a paper examining that peculiar class of people who may be loosely described as health bloggers. Their survey queried 197 English-language medical blogs and they included questions designed to evaluate bloggers’ Internet and blogging habits, blog characteristics, blogging motivations, and, finally, their demographics.
“Medical blogs are frequently picked up by mainstream media; thus, blogs are an important vehicle to influence medical and health policy.”
The results were published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research and found that “medical bloggers are highly educated and devoted blog writers, faithful to their sources and readers. Sharing practical knowledge and skills, as well as influencing the way other people think, were major motivations for blogging among our medical bloggers. Medical blogs are frequently picked up by mainstream media; thus, blogs are an important vehicle to influence medical and health policy.”
Two of the researchers also formed the Health Blogs Observatory, which they call an online community, and published a directory. Ed Silverman reached out to Ivor Kovic, an emergency physician, about the survey and their hopes for their observatory. Find out more about the project.
