Quality of information about cosmetic products in social media: one-year analysis of portuguese influential Instagram profiles

Abstract

This work characterizes scientific and health information fromposts addressing cosmetic products on Instagram for one-year.Portuguese profiles that cover cosmetic products were selectedbased on popularity and expertise. Posts concerning cosmeticproducts were recorded, and those containing scientific andhealth information were selected. A new method was used,which allows rating each post as "correct," "confuse," or "incor-rect". Ten popular profiles and three expert profiles wereselected. Forty-five posts containing scientific and health infor-mation about cosmetic products were analyzed. Popular profileswere approximately ten times more likely to convey confusinginformation about cosmetic products than expert profiles.