Avaliação da acurácia da informação sobre COVID-19 circulada em comunidade on-line no Facebook

Online health communities (OHC) have gained prominence as a strategic space for accessing and exchanging health information, including on COVID-19. In this context, the quality of online information becomes an important issue, especially because of the circulation of misinformation about the disease in the digital environment. Considering this scenario, the study aimed to identify the level of accuracy of information circulating in an online community about COVID-19 on Facebook. It was assessed whether the content available in the environment was in accordance with the most appropriate and current scientific evidence on COVID at the time. Posts and their respective comments published between November 2021 to January 2022 were collected and analyzed. In the online community, the topics post-COVID, Vaccination, and Infection were the most recurrent. Almost 60% of the content on post-COVID had no corresponding scientific evidence. Regarding vaccination, 12,9% of the information was incorrect. Regarding infection, approximately 47% of the content on the topic was completely correct. Overall, about one-third of the information circulated on the COS analyzed was totally or partially incorrect. This suggests that participants in the online environment may be exposed to misinformation about COVID.