COVID-19 Information Overload and Cyber Aggression during the Pandemic Lockdown: The Mediating Role of Depression/Anxiety and the Moderating Role of Confucian Responsibility Thinking

Abstract

Many countries adopted lockdown measures to curb the spread of the outbreak in 2020, while information about COVID-19 has dominated various media outlets, which has led to information overload for people. However, previous research has mainly focused on cancer information overload and the corresponding consequence, and failed to examine its adverse effects in the context of major public health events. Based on the Frustrate Aggression Theory and the Scapegoat Theory, the present study established a moderated mediation model to investigate the emotional and behavioral outcomes of COVID-19 information overload. The mediating role of depression/anxiety in the association between COVID-19 information overload and cyber aggression, as well as the moderating role of Confucian responsibility thinking, were tested. This model was examined with 1005 Chinese people (mean age = 26.91 years, SD = 9.94) during the COVID-19 outbreak. Mediation analyses revealed that COVID-19 information overload was positively related to cyber aggression, depression, and anxiety, parallelly and partially mediated this relationship. Moderated mediation analyses further indicated that Confucian responsibility thinking not only moderated the direct link between COVID-19 information overload and cyber aggression, with the effect being significant only for people with a low level of Confucian responsibility thinking, but also moderated the relationship between COVID-19 information overload and depression/anxiety respectively, with the associations being much more potent for individuals with low levels of Confucian responsibility thinking. These findings have the potential to inform the development of prevention and intervention programs designed to reduce the negative emotions and cyber aggression associated with information overload in public health events.

Excessive and Unreliable Health Information and Its Predictability for Anxiety: A Cross-Sectional Observational Study

“…Our study is in concordance with a few recent studies that used validated measures of information overload for the COVID-19 pandemic with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder [26], cyber aggression, Confucian responsibility thinking, depression and anxiety [27]. A similar construct was used by a German study [25], they found health anxiety was correlated positively with cyberchondria and maladaptive emotion regulation but negatively correlated with the perception of being well-informed and adaptive emotion regulation.…”

An NLP-Assisted Bayesian Time Series Analysis for Prevalence of Twitter Cyberbullying During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Further, with each year the second peak persists for longer. This may be related to a variety of things, such as increased transmission during the winter, as COVID-19 proliferation rates can change significantly with temperature [37], prompting more isolation and thus internet use, or increased cyber-aggression as a psychological response to the external stress of the pandemic [38].…”

Emotions and Incivility in Vaccine Mandate Discourse: Natural Language Processing Insights

“…Accordingly, policies that mandate the hesitant to get vaccinated inhibit the ability to escape the threat, and as a result, individuals may react with incivility. Indeed, stress and anxiety have been demonstrated to predict a wealth of uncivil behaviors, including cyber aggression and bullying during COVID-19 [ 45 - 47 ]. Thus, we posit the following.…”

“…Feelings of sadness have been linked with uncivil behavior, including acts of cyber aggression [ 47 , 53 ]. The freedom to travel, remain employed, socialize in groups, eat in restaurants, go to the gym, and more is increasingly determined by one’s vaccination status [ 54 , 55 ].…”