Anita Lavorgna – författare

Fraudulent, harmful, or at best useless pharmaceutical and therapeutic approaches

developed outside science-based medicine have boomed in recent years, especially due to

the commercialisation of cyberspace. The latter has played a fundamental role in the rise

of false ‘health experts’, and in the creation of filter bubbles and echo chambers that have

contributed to the formation of highly polarised debates on non-science-based health

practices—online as well as offline.

By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this edited book brings together

contributions of international academics and practitioners from criminology, digital

sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism, where they critically

analyse different types of non-science-based health approaches. With this volume, we aim

to reconcile different scientific understandings of these practices, synthesising a variety

of empirical, theoretical and interpretative approaches, and exploring the challenges,

implications and potential remedies to the spread of dangerous and misleading health

information.

This edited book will offer some food for thought not only to students and academics

in the social sciences, health psychology and medicine among other disciplines, but also

to medical practitioners, science journalists, debunkers, policy makers and the general

public, as they might all benefit from a greater awareness and critical knowledge of the

harms caused by non-scientific health practices.

Fraudulent, harmful, or at best useless pharmaceutical and therapeutic approaches

developed outside science-based medicine have boomed in recent years, especially due to

the commercialisation of cyberspace. The latter has played a fundamental role in the rise

of false ‘health experts’, and in the creation of filter bubbles and echo chambers that have

contributed to the formation of highly polarised debates on non-science-based health

practices—online as well as offline.

By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this edited book brings together

contributions of international academics and practitioners from criminology, digital

sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism, where they critically

analyse different types of non-science-based health approaches. With this volume, we aim

to reconcile different scientific understandings of these practices, synthesising a variety

of empirical, theoretical and interpretative approaches, and exploring the challenges,

implications and potential remedies to the spread of dangerous and misleading health

information.

This edited book will offer some food for thought not only to students and academics

in the social sciences, health psychology and medicine among other disciplines, but also

to medical practitioners, science journalists, debunkers, policy makers and the general

public, as they might all benefit from a greater awareness and critical knowledge of the

harms caused by non-scientific health practices.

The coronavirus pandemic struck the world in a very distinctive way: experience from past pandemics or from more recent outbreaks could give us only a limited understanding of how the situation was likely to unfold. In this context, and with cyberspace being increasingly used to support health-related decision making and to market health products, potentially harmful behaviours have been carried out by individuals propagating non-science-based health (mis)information and conspiratorial thinking. This includes, among other actions, boycotting the use of masks and physical distancing, proactively opposing the use of the COVID-19 candidate vaccines, and promoting the use of useless or even dangerous substances to prevent or resist the virus. By relying on a virtual ethnography approach carried out on Italian-speaking alternative lifestyle and counter-information online communities, this book shows how the nature of personal interactions online and the construction of both personal and group identities through the development of an ''us vs. them'' narrative, are central to the creation and propagation of medical misinformation.

This book is essential reading for researchers in the social, health, and data sciences and also professionals interested in scientific communication.

The coronavirus pandemic struck the world in a very distinctive way: experience from past pandemics or from more recent outbreaks could give us only a limited understanding of how the situation was likely to unfold. In this context, and with cyberspace being increasingly used to support health-related decision making and to market health products, potentially harmful behaviours have been carried out by individuals propagating non-science-based health (mis)information and conspiratorial thinking. This includes, among other actions, boycotting the use of masks and physical distancing, proactively opposing the use of the COVID-19 candidate vaccines, and promoting the use of useless or even dangerous substances to prevent or resist the virus. By relying on a virtual ethnography approach carried out on Italian-speaking alternative lifestyle and counter-information online communities, this book shows how the nature of personal interactions online and the construction of both personal and group identities through the development of an ''us vs. them'' narrative, are central to the creation and propagation of medical misinformation.

This book is essential reading for researchers in the social, health, and data sciences and also professionals interested in scientific communication.

This edited book promotes and facilitates cybercrime research by providing a cutting-edge collection of perspectives on the critical usage of online data across platforms, as well as the implementation of both traditional and innovative analysis methods. The accessibility, variety and wealth of data available online presents substantial opportunities for researchers from different disciplines to study cybercrimes and, more generally, human behavior in cyberspace. The unique and dynamic characteristics of cyberspace often demand cross-disciplinary and cross-national research endeavors, but disciplinary, cultural and legal differences can hinder the ability of researchers to collaborate. This work also provides a review of the ethics associated with the use of online data sources across the globe. The authors are drawn from multiple disciplines and nations, providing unique insights into the value and challenges evident in online data use for cybercrime scholarship. It is a key text for researchers at the upper undergraduate level and above.