Public media as a tool for dissemination of evidence-based information

The internet is becoming a more and more popular source of all kinds of information. The quantity of web pages that offer information and advice about health is increasing, though the quality is often not rising. The aim of the presented work is to describe advantages and difficulties connected with dissemination of evidence-based information in social media. Using Polish Facebook and Twitter profiles over the course of 2 years, we posted about 400 posts and tweets. We analysed types of topics and some strategies to broaden our audience. On basis of our results, we found that probably inconclusive results make review summaries unintelligible and not popular in public media, though the broad reach of posts in public media does not implicate that the message was understood. Even though numerous efforts were put into guidelines on how to write a proper plain language summary of the systematic review, there is still space for improvement.