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Information‐seeking behaviour for epilepsy: an infodemiological study of searches for Wikipedia articles
Author(s) -
Brigo Francesco,
Otte Willem M.,
Igwe Stanley C.,
Ausserer Harald,
Nardone Raffaele,
Tezzon Frediano,
Trinka Eugen
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
epileptic disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.673
H-Index - 53
eISSN - 1950-6945
pISSN - 1294-9361
DOI - 10.1684/epd.2015.0772
Subject(s) - epilepsy , psychogenic disease , encyclopedia , the internet , medicine , migraine , psychology , psychiatry , family medicine , computer science , world wide web , library science
Millions of people worldwide use the internet daily as a source of health information. Wikipedia is a popular free online encyclopaedia used by patients and physicians to search for health‐related information. Our aim was to evaluate information‐seeking behaviour of English‐speaking internet users searching Wikipedia for articles related to epilepsy and epileptic seizures. Using Wiki Trends, which provides quantitative information on daily viewing of articles, data on global search queries for Wikipedia articles related to epilepsy and seizures were analysed. The daily Wikipedia article views on syncope, psychogenic non‐epileptic seizures, migraine, and multiple sclerosis served as comparative data. The period of analysis covered was from January 2008 to December 2014. Overall, the Wikipedia article “epilepsy and driving” was found to be more frequently visited than the articles “epilepsy and employment” or “epilepsy in children”. Since January 2008, the Wikipedia article “multiple sclerosis” was more often visited compared to the articles “epilepsy”, “syncope”, “psychogenic non‐epileptic seizures” or “migraine”; the article “epilepsy” ranked 3,779 and was less frequently visited than “multiple sclerosis”, ranked at 571, in traffic on Wikipedia. The highest peak in search volume for the article “epilepsy” coincided with the news of a celebrity having seizures. Fears and worries about epileptic seizures, their impact on driving and employment, and news about celebrities with epilepsy might be major determinants in searching Wikipedia for information.