Evaluating Information and Misinformation during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence for Epistemic Vigilance (original) (raw)
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Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a novel threat and traditional and new media provide people with an abundance of information and misinformation on the topic. In the current study, we investigated who tends to trust what type of mis/information. The data were collected in Norway from a sample of 405 participants during the first wave of COVID-19 in April 2020. We focused on three kinds of belief: the belief that the threat is overrated (COVID-threat skepticism), the belief that the threat is underrated (COVID-threat belief) and belief in misinformation about COVID-19. We studied sociodemographic factors associated with these beliefs and the interplay between attitudes to COVID-19, media consumption and prevention behavior. All three types of belief were associated with distrust in information about COVID-19 provided by traditional media and distrust in the authorities' approach to the pandemic. COVID-threat skepticism was associated with male gender, reduced news consumption si...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
Due to changes in the information environment since the last global epidemic, high WHO officials have spoken about the need to fight not only the current COVID-19 pandemic but also the related infodemic. We thus explored how people search for information, how they perceive its credibility, and how all this relates to their engagement in self-protective behaviors in the crucial period right after the onset of COVID-19 epidemic. The online questionnaire was circulated within 48 h after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Slovenia. We gathered information on participants' demographics, perception of the situation, their emotional and behavioral responses to the situation (i.e., self-protective behavior), perceived subjective knowledge, perceived credibility of different sources of information, and their level of trust. We looked into the relationships between perceived credibility and trust, and self-protective behavior of 1,718 participants and found that mass media, social media, and officials received relatively low levels of trust. Conversely, medical professionals and scientists were deemed the most credible. The perceived credibility of received information was linked not only with lower levels of negative emotional responses but also with higher adherence to much needed self-protective measures, which aim to contain the spread of the disease. While results might vary between societies with different levels of trust in relevant governmental and professional institutions, and while variances in self-protective behavior scores explained by our model are modest, even a small increase in self-protective behavior could go a long way in viral epidemics like the one we are facing today.
BMC Public Health, 2022
Background: Tackling infodemics with flooding misinformation is key to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet only a few studies have attempted to understand the characteristics of the people who believe in misinformation. Methods: Data was used from an online survey that was administered in April 2020 to 6518 English-speaking adult participants in the United States. We created binary variables to represent four misinformation categories related to COVID-19: general COVID-19-related, vaccine/anti-vaccine, COVID-19 as an act of bioterrorism, and mode of transmission. Using binary logistic regression and the LASSO regularization, we then identified the important predictors of belief in each type of misinformation. Nested vector bootstrapping approach was used to estimate the standard error of the LASSO coefficients. Results: About 30% of our sample reported believing in at least one type of COVID-19-related misinformation. Belief in one type of misinformation was not strongly associated with belief in other types. We also identified 58 demographic and socioeconomic factors that predicted people's susceptibility to at least one type of COVID-19 misinformation. Different groups, characterized by distinct sets of predictors, were susceptible to different types of misinformation. There were 25 predictors for general COVID-19 misinformation, 42 for COVID-19 vaccine, 36 for COVID-19 as an act of bioterrorism, and 27 for mode of COVID-transmission. Conclusion: Our findings confirm the existence of groups with unique characteristics that believe in different types of COVID-19 misinformation. Findings are readily applicable by policymakers to inform careful targeting of misinformation mitigation strategies.
An Assessment of the Rapid Decline of Trust in US Sources of Public Information about COVID-19
Journal of Health Communication
We conducted a longitidinal assessment of 806 respondents in March, 2020 in the US to examine the trustworthiness of sources of information about COVID-19. Respondents were recontacted after four months. Information sources included mainstream media, state health departments, the CDC, the White House, and a well-known university. We also examined how demographics, political partisanship, and skepticism about COVID-19 were associated with the perceived trustworthiness of information sources and decreased trustworthiness over time. At baseline, the majority of respondants reported high trust in COVID-19 information from state health departments (75.6%), the CDC (80.9%), and a university (Johns Hopkins, 81.1%). Mainstream media was trusted by less than half the respondents (41.2%), and the White House was the least trusted source (30.9%). At the 4-month follow-up, a significant decrease in trustworthiness in all five sources of COVID-19 information was observed. The most pronounced reductions were from the CDC and the White House. In multivariate analyses, factors associated with rating the CDC, state health department, and a university as trustworthy sources of COVID-19 information were political party affiliation, level of education, and skepticism about COVID-19. The most consistent predictor of decreased trust was political party affiliation, with Democrats as compared to Republicans less likely to report decreased trust across all sources.
Online Media and Global Communication
Purpose In light of the fact that people have more opportunities to encounter scientific misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, this research aimed to examine how different types of misinformation impact readers’ evaluations of messages and to identify the mechanisms (motivated reasoning hypothesis vs. classical reasoning theory) underlying those evaluations of message inaccuracy and fakeness. Design/methodology/approach This research employed data from an online experiment conducted in Hong Kong in March 2022, when the fifth COVID-19 wave peaked. The data were collected using quota sampling established by age based on census data (N = 835). Findings In general, the participants were not able to discern manipulated content from misinterpreted content. When given a counter-attitudinal message, those who read a message with research findings as supporting evidence rated the message as being more inaccurate and fake than those who read the same message but with quotes as sup...
Brazilian Journal of Health Review, 2021
The ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic has escalated to a world health crisis. Although measures such as handwashing and social distancing are effective to slow down transmission, the spread of misinformation online has proven to be a major obstacle to the massive adherence to those practices. Here we investigated the influence of conspiratorial beliefs, optimism, and the level of trust in institutions, on the perceptions of true and false information regarding SARS-Cov-2 among 365 Brazilian participants (male n = 100, female n = 265). Respondents ranged in age from 18 to 74 years (M = 33.61 years, SD = 13.17 years). The structural model of perceived information regarding SARS-Cov-2, optimism and conspiratorial beliefs provided satisfactory fit to the data (χ2[28] = 445.31, p = 0.001; CFI = .96; TLI = .93; RMSEA = .07 [90% CI .03, .09] SRMR = .04). Results revealed that participants with a higher level of optimism tended to disagree more with false information, while people with a higher level of conspiratorial beliefs tended to accept it more and disagree with true content. Findings confirm that patterns observed in the literature are applicable to the current pandemic. It also suggests that efforts to strengthen government credibility and combat misinformation should be redoubled
Epistemic vice predicts acceptance of Covid-19 misinformation
Episteme, 2021
Why are mistaken beliefs about COVID-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only part of the differences between people in their susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more susceptible to believing COVID-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US adult sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale that captures features of the current competing analyses of epistemic vice in the literature. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about COVID-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology.
A Pandemic of Misbelief: How Beliefs Promote or Undermine COVID-19 Mitigation
Frontiers in Political Science, 2021
Sustained and coordinated social action is needed to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Health practitioners and governments around the world have issued recommendations and mandates designed to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 by influencing the social behaviors of the general public. Why and when are some people unwilling to take action to protect themselves and others from the effects of this public health crisis? We find that belief in COVID-19 consensus information (by the self or perceptions of scientists' beliefs), are consequential predictors of COVID-19 mitigation behaviors. Importantly, support for COVID-19 conspiracy theories predicted decreased, whereas perceived understanding of COVID-19 predicted increased, belief in COVID-19 consensus information. We also implemented an Illusion of Explanatory depth paradigm, an approach to examining knowledge overestimation shown to reduce confidence in one's understanding of complex phenomena. By requiring participants to elaborate upon COVID-19 conspiracies, we experimentally increased understanding of these theories, which led, in turn, to ironic increases in support for the conspiracy theories and undermined perceived understanding of COVID-19 information for a notable portion of our participants. Together, our results suggest that attention given to COVID-19 conspiracies may be misguided; describing or explaining the existence of COVID-19 conspiracies may ironically increase support for these accounts and undermine knowledge about and willingness to engage in COVID-19 mitigation.
Public perceptions of the perils of misinformation in pandemic
Rawal Med J , 2021
Objective: To investigate the public perception regarding to the perils of misinformation in pandemic. Methodology: This quantitative cross-sectional design study with convenient sampling techniques was conducted in the IAHS, UAJ&K in March to April 2020 after ethical approval. Sample with both genders, using any types of social media between 15 to 65 years of ages was selected. Those who used social media for 2 years were included in the study, while new social media users were excluded. The date were collected from online survey with structural questionnaire and was analyzed on SPSS version 21. Results: Out of 229 participants, 107(46%) said that pandemic was due to punishment from God. Some thought it resulted from some sort of human negligence (N=40, 17%), and a few of them said it's a man-made biological weapon (N=15, 6%). The participants had physical (N=17, 7%), social (N=66, 28%), economical (N=67, 29%), and mental (N=35, 15%) issues due to pandemic. To avoid the misinformation majority respondent decided to Stop posting/sharing (N=99, 53%) provide or share authentic information (N=97, 42%), motivate other (N=94, 41%) and delete/report misinformation (N=65, 25%). Conclusion: Misinformation leads to panic attack, sleep disturbance and develop mistrust. So it is important to arrange awareness campaigns for public on the issue of detrimental effects of misinformation. Keywords: Misinformation, Covid, perceptions.
BMC Psychology, 2023
This study investigates the intricate relationship between exposure to information sources, trust in these sources, conspiracy and misinformation beliefs, and COVID-19 anxiety among 509 Omani citizens aged 11 to 50, representing 11 governorates. Employing structural equation modeling, we not only examine these associations but also explore how trust and COVID-19 anxiety act as moderating variables in this context. Additionally, we delve into demographic factors such as age group, educational level, gender, and place of residence (governorate) to discern potential variations. Our findings reveal that trust in health experts is inversely related to belief in conspiracy theories, while trust in health experts negatively correlates with exposure to conspiracy and misinformation. Intriguingly, trust in health experts exhibits divergent effects across governorates: it diminishes conspiracy and misinformation beliefs in some regions but not in others. Exposure to personal contacts and digital media, on the other hand, is associated with heightened beliefs in misinformation and conspiracy theories, respectively, in select governorates. These distinctions may be attributed to proximity to Muscat, the capital city of Oman, where various media outlets and policy-making institutions are situated. Furthermore, lower educational attainment is linked to greater belief in conspiracy and misinformation. Females reported higher levels of conspiracy theory beliefs and COVID-19 anxiety while no significant differences were detected in misinformation beliefs. This study sheds light on the intricate dynamics of misinformation and conspiracy theories in the context of COVID-19 in Oman, highlighting the pivotal roles of trust and COVID-19 anxiety as moderating factors. These findings offer valuable insights into understanding and addressing the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories during a public health crisis.