Background: Generation Z (born 1995-2010) members are digital residents who use technology and the internet more frequently than any previous generation to learn about their health. They are increasingly moving away from conventional methods of seeking health information as technology advances quickly and becomes more widely available, resulting in a more digitalized health care system. Similar to all groups, Generation Z has specific health care requirements and preferences, and their use of technology influences how they look for health information. However, they have often been overlooked in scholarly research. Objective: First, we aimed to identify the information-seeking preferences of older individuals and Generation Z (those between the ages of 18 and 26 years); second, we aimed to predict the effects of digital health literacy and health empowerment in both groups. We also aimed to identify factors that impact how both groups engage in digital health and remain in control of their own health. Methods: The Health Information National Trends Survey was adopted for further use in 2022. We analyzed 1862 valid data points by conducting a survey among Chinese respondents to address the research gap. A descriptive analysis, 2-tailed t test, and multiple linear regression were applied to the results. Results: When compared with previous generations, Generation Z respondents (995/1862, 53.44%) were more likely to use the internet to find out about health-related topics, whereas earlier generations relied more on traditional media and interpersonal contact. Web-based information-seeking behavior is predicted by digital health literacy (Generation Z: β=.192, P<.001; older population: β=.337, P<.001). While this was happening, only seeking health information from physicians positively predicted health empowerment (Generation Z: β=.070, P=.002; older population: β=.089, P<.001). Despite more frequent use of the internet to learn about their health, Generation Z showed lower levels of health empowerment and less desire to look for health information, overall. Conclusions: This study examined and compared the health information–seeking behaviors of Generation Z and older individuals to improve their digital health literacy and health empowerment. The 2 groups demonstrated distinct preferences regarding their choice of information sources. Health empowerment and digital health literacy were both significantly related to information-seeking behaviors.

Background: Ongoing rumors and fake news regarding food fraud, adulteration, and contamination are highly visible. Health risk information circulating through media and interpersonal communication channels has made health crisis an important research agenda. Objective: This study explored the issue of food fraud and the effect of misinformation. Further, it assessed whether and how these issues have provided evidence-based interventions for food handlers and regulators to mitigate fraud misinformation. Methods: The Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) was adopted for a collaborative study in China, after which a cross-sectional survey with door-to-door interviews was performed. Participants from Beijing and Hefei were selected using multistage sampling of adults in May 2017. Based on 4 government surveillance reports on food rumors and safety incidents, a descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and analysis of variance were performed on the data. Results: A total of 3090 results were gathered and analyzed. Among the respondents, 83.6% (2584/3090) heard at least one food rumor. Learning about food fraud was correlated with interpersonal connections (eg, doctors or health specialists) for accessing food health information. Overall, Chinese citizens with a higher level of interpersonal connection were more likely to be concerned about food incidents with a statistical difference (P<.001). Interpersonal connection was the most frequent communication source (698/1253, 55.7%), followed by traditional media (325/1253, 25.9%) and internet portals (144/1253, 11.5%). There was a significant relationship between media use and media category in Beijing (P<.001) and Hefei (P<.001). Overall, responses to food fraud and incident risks were lower in Beijing than in Hefei (P=.006). The respondents in Beijing were confronted more frequently by food rumors (range 346-1253) than those in Hefei (range 155-946). The urban dwellers in Beijing and their rural counterparts in Hefei also differed in terms of perceiving different levels of food risks from different media sources. The food rumor narratives that examined the conspiracy belief showed that social media played more important roles in influencing attitudes against misinformation for users in Hefei than in Beijing. Conclusions: This study shows that consumers have to be on guard against not only fake food, but also spreading fake information and rumors, as well as conspiracy beliefs involving fake food. This study focused on characterizing media sources, types of food fraud misinformation, and risk perceptions of food safety, which mix urgency and suspicion, and attempted to provide evidence-based interventions for risk management guidance, with the hypothesis of significant correlations between media types and sources, and consumer exposure and perception levels of food rumors and risks.

Background: The fact that the number of individuals with obesity has increased worldwide calls into question media efforts for informing the public. This study attempts to determine the ways in which the mainstream digital news covers the etiology of obesity and diseases associated with the burden of obesity. Objective: The dual objectives of this study are to obtain an understanding of what the news reports on obesity and to explore meaning in data by extending the preconceived grounded theory. Methods: The 10 years of news text from 2010 to 2019 compared the development of obesity-related coverage and its potential impact on its perception in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Digital news stories on obesity along with affliction and inferences in 9 Chinese mainstream newspapers were sampled. An automatic content analysis tool, DiVoMiner was proposed. This computer-aided platform is designed to organize and filter large sets of data on the basis of the patterns of word occurrence and term discovery. Another programming language, Python 3, was used to explore connections and patterns created by the Results: A total of 30,968 news stories were identified with increasing attention since 2016. The highest intensity of newspaper coverage of obesity communication was observed in Taiwan. Overall, a stronger focus on 2 shared causative attributes of obesity is on stress (n=4483, 33.0%) and tobacco use (n=3148, 23.2%). The burdens of obesity and cardiovascular diseases are implied to be the most, despite the aggregated interaction of edge centrality showing the highest link between the "cancer" and obesity. This study goes beyond traditional journalism studies by extending the framework of computational and customizable web-based text analysis. This could set a norm for researchers and practitioners who work on data projects largely for an innovative attempt. Conclusions: Similar to previous studies, the discourse between the obesity epidemic and personal afflictions is the most emphasized approach. Our study also indicates that the inclination of blaming personal attributes for health afflictions potentially limits social and governmental responsibility for addressing this issue.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global public health emergency, increasing the prevalence of emotional distress, and potentially leading to altered diet behavior. Self-efficacy measures various aspects of perceiving and understanding emotions. The present study was carried out with the objective of understanding the effect of emotional self-efficacy on dietary behavior and quality. It also shed light on which elements contributed to the link between food-related behavior and perceived dietary quality during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the factor analysis of nineteen food groups, choices, consumption, and socioeconomic status were examined in a sample of 441 Chinese participants. Multiple linear regression examined the association between food consumption, dietary quality, and self-efficacy. Contrary to prior research, the intake of salty snacks and alcoholic beverages dropped by 3.3% and 2.8%, respectively, during the first lockdown. Emotional self-efficacy negatively mediated the relationship between socioeconomic status and dietary quality. In conclusion, emotional self-efficacy is a well-established tool for evaluating how Chinese people cope with negative emotions. As an individual’s dietary quality was affected during the imposed lockdown, the present study offers valuable insight into psychosocial factors that may contribute to health disparities by advocating for organized nutritional support in future epidemic-related quarantines.

Advertising messages can affect the public as a risk or protective factor for socially disadvantaged groups, and they may reflect how characters reflect perceptions are perceived in a society. This study aimed to investigate how older people are portrayed in televised food commercials from the approach of a healthy aging perspective in contemporary Chinese society. All televised advertising in the Ad Topic archive were screened against inclusion and exclusion criteria, and a total of 164 commercials from the years of 2016–2019 that portrayed Chinese older people were sampled. The association between the main older characters with the product categories, healthy vs. unhealthy foods, use of health claims, sex, type of spokesperson, companions, and tones and manners were included in the analysis. Older people more frequently appeared in unhealthy food products than in healthy food products. Health claims involving older adults were portrayed adequately, whereas nursing professions as companions of older adults were overlooked. Positive advertising that delivered happy, caring, or warm tones was overwhelmingly represented. Thus, the advertising messages circulated in China represent a binary stereotype model of images of older adults’ characteristics that reflect ageist and the so-called agelessism, referring to the new application of the look from the approach of social psychology and marketing field. This study examined aging discrimination reflected in advertisements. Studies exploring the impact of a crisis remain limited. Research is needed to improve the accuracy of advertised healthy older adults and normal aging.

Background: Patients frequently search for health information online and value physician support in evaluating and interpreting their findings, yet many hesitate to share their online searches with their physicians. This hesitation hinders shared decision-making and compromises patient care. While extensive research has examined patients’ online health information–seeking behaviors, little has focused on patients’ disclosure of this information to their physicians during consultations. Objective: Guided by the Health Empowerment Model and the Linguistic Model of Patient Participation in Care, this study aims to (1) identify distinct patient profiles based on eHealth literacy and psychological health empowerment levels, (2) examine how these patient profiles differ in online health information seeking and disclosure to physicians, and (3) investigate whether patient-centered communication (PCC) promotes information disclosure and whether this effect varies by patient profile. Methods: This cross-sectional study surveyed 2001 Chinese participants recruited through convenience sampling. Patient profiles were identified using k-means cluster analysis with standardized z scores of eHealth literacy and psychological health empowerment. Differences between profiles in information behaviors were examined using 1-way Welch ANOVA, chi-square tests, and pairwise comparisons. Regression analyses examined the association between PCC and disclosure of online health information. Moderation analyses using the Hayes PROCESS macro assessed whether this association varied across patient profiles. Results: Four distinct patient profiles were identified: effective self-managers (996/2001, 49.8%), moderate-needs dependent patients (408/2001, 20.4%), high-needs patients (68/2001, 3.4%), and dangerous self-managers (529/2001, 26.4%). Profiles differed significantly in information-seeking intentions (F3,289=62.09; P<.001; η²=0.12) and disclosure intentions (F3,299.41=66.08; P<.001; η²=0.09). “Effective self-managers” showed the highest seeking (mean 4.01, 95% CI 3.96-4.06) and disclosure intentions (mean 3.43, 95% CI 3.36-3.50), while “high-needs patients” showed the lowest intentions for both behaviors. Actual information-seeking rates also differed significantly across profiles (χ²3=103.4; P<.001), with “effective self-managers” having the highest rate (800/996, 80.3%) and “high-needs patients” the lowest (25/68, 36.8%). Among seekers, disclosure rates varied significantly (χ²3=23.1; P<.001), with “high-needs patients” showing the highest disclosure (16/25, 64%) despite having the lowest seeking rate. PCC was positively associated with actual information disclosure behavior (odds ratio 1.26, 95% CI 1.04-1.53; P=.02), with no significant moderation by patient profiles (χ²3=1.7; P=.64). Conclusions: This study extends existing literature from information-seeking behavior to patients’ disclosure of online findings to physicians. Unlike prior research that examined eHealth literacy and psychological health empowerment separately, this study integrated these constructs to identify meaningful patient profiles with distinct information behavior patterns. PCC facilitates disclosure regardless of patient profile. For practice, physicians should adopt a PCC that acknowledges patients’ online research efforts, promoting safer information use and stronger patient-physician relationships.