Understanding the “infodemic”: social media news use, homogeneous online discussion, self-perceived media literacy and misperceptions about COVID-19

Abstract

PurposeThis study has three main purposes: (1) to investigate the association between social media news use and misperceptions about COVID-19; (2) to explore the mediating role of homogeneous online discussion; (3) and to understand whether the extent to which one perceives themselves as media-literate could moderate the relationship.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted an online survey and collected data through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of 797 participants aged 18 and above completed the survey. The average age of the respondents is 38.40 years (SD = 12.31), and 41.2% were female. In terms of party identification, 30.8% were reported leaning toward Republicans; 53.7% leaned toward Democrats, and 15.4% were reported neutral.FindingsResults from a moderated mediation model show that social media news use is positively associated with misperceptions about the COVID-19. Moreover, homogeneous online discussion was a significant mediator of the relationship between social media news use and misperceptions about COVID-19. Further, self-perceived media literacy (SPML) significantly moderated the main and indirect effects between social media news use and COVID-19 misperceptions, such that the associations became weaker among those with higher SPML.Originality/valueFindings provide insights into the significance of online information sources, discussion network heterogeneity and media literacy education. Although there have been many studies on misinformation, prior research has not examined these relationships, which may help provide solutions to cope with misinformation.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2021-0305

Emotion Dysregulation and Conspiracy Beliefs about COVID-19: The Moderating Role of Critical Social Media Use

“…Second, our findings are also consistent with previous studies linking unregulated social media use with endorsement of conspiracy theories and the strength of such beliefs [ 23 , 34 , 35 ]. These data are not surprising given that conspiracy theories, like most misinformation, are consumed and reinforced primarily through the most popular social media platforms.…”

“…Our study extends these results to specific COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. While previous research has demonstrated the protective role of general media literacy in the development and maintenance of conspiracy theories [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], our findings represent a new contribution to the literature because here we considered critical media literacy in the specific context of social media.…”

“…A crucial role could be played by media literacy, which is a combination of a person’s knowledge about media, motivations, and needs that arise from consuming new media, and intellectual skills needed to critically analyze and interpret information [ 30 , 31 ]. There is evidence that higher media literacy is associated with lower advocacy of conspiracy theories [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], but the limited existing data focus on a general definition of media literacy and leave out the issue of media literacy in the specific context of social media networks.…”

“Masks do not work”: COVID-19 misperceptions and theory-driven corrective strategies on Facebook

“…With regards to H1a and H1b, media use and message exposure, higher exposure to liberal media was associated with lower misperceptions while higher exposure to conservative media was related to higher misperceptions related to COVID-19 mask wearing behavior. These findings are in line with past research studies (Chung and Jones-Jang, 2021;Motta et al, 2020;Nyhan and Reifler, 2010;Stecula and Pickup, 2021;Su et al, 2022) and demonstrate the importance of individuals' choice of media channels and their media consumption patterns. Misperceptions were directly related to COVID-19 related health behavior (Chan et al, 2017;Evanega et al, 2020) and as such the use of partisan media played a critical role in the fight against the virus.…”

“…Since the outbreak of coronavirus, COVID-19 related misinformation has been spreading worldwide, incited by unverified rumors, stigma and conspiracy theories. Recent studies have covered topics such as the effects of news consumption on misperceptions about COVID-19 (Su et al, 2022) and misinformation engagement, e.g. sharing and commenting (Xiao and Su, 2022), the spread of COVID-19 misinformation (Motta et al, 2020), along with the investigation of relationships between false claims and public health compliance, e.g.…”