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At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no vaccine to cure or slow its impact due to the novelty of the virus, nor were there were any other standardized measures to handle its spread. Yet, despite the detrimental consequences of the pandemic and its impact on people’s lives, the behavior of individuals to combat the pandemic was not necessarily consistent with official guidelines. To make things worse, the pandemic was highly politicized in countries such as the U.S. With a help of a national survey from the U.S., we examine the associations between media literacy variables and willingness to perform recommended COVID-19 related health behavior. Moreover, we also examine the moderating role of conservative media use in this relationship. Our findings show that conservative media use was negatively associated with these protective behaviors, and that both media literacy variables were positively related with willingness to perform recommended COVID-19 related health behavior. Our results show that media literacy can mitigate some of the impact of conservative media use on individuals. Our findings help understand the complexity of protective behavior against the virus during a highly politicized pandemic.

Mounting uncertainties regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the popularity of social media created fertile grounds for conspiracy theories to flourish, leading to a global “infodemic.” We examine information sources used to support five popular COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on Twitter to identify (1) their primary building blocks, (2) similarities and dissimilarities across COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and (3) the relationship between type of message content and content distribution. Findings show that statements of belief and of malicious purpose were most popular, followed by conspirators, authentication, and secretive actions. However, only malicious purposes and secretive actions messages successfully predicted higher distribution of content, while, for instance, content authentication showed a negative relation. Furthermore, the type of conspiracy theories matters. Mega-theories, such as Agenda 21 and QAnon, incorporated less statements of Belief. COVID-19 vaccine–related theories focused more on authentication, while QAnon highlighted the conspirators behind the pandemic. Conceptual and practical implications are discussed.

Although there is enough scientific evidence to show the benefits and safety of vaccines, vaccine rates are low, while misperceptions about vaccines are on the rise. The main purposes of the current study are to 1) examine the effects of narrative vs. statistical messages on vaccine intention, 2) test the mediating role of perceived expectancies, and 3) examine the moderating roles of perceived susceptibility and misperceptions on vaccine intention. Data were collected with an online experiment through Amazon Mturk. The online experiment was conducted via Qualtrics once the study was considered exempt by the Institutional Research Board of a large University in the U.S. A total of 300 participants aged 18 and above completed the survey. Findings show that perceived expectancies mediate the relationship between message manipulation and vaccine intention. Our findings also show a three-way interaction which indicates that among individuals with high misperceptions, statistical messages are more persuasive for individuals with high perceived susceptibility, while narrative messages are more influential for individuals with low perceived susceptibility.

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