Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 22, 2022
Date Accepted: Aug 14, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Sep 6, 2022
Social media news use and COVID-19 misinformation engagement: A survey study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Social media is widely used as a source of news and information regarding COVID-19. However, the abundance of misinformation on social media platforms has raised concerns regarding the spreading infodemic. Accordingly, many have questioned the utility and impact of social media news use on users' engagement with (mis) information.
Objective:
This study offers a conceptual framework for how social media news use influences COVID-19 misinformation engagement. More specifically, we examine how news consumption on social media leads to COVID-19 misinformation sharing by inducing belief in such misinformation. We further explore if the effects of social media news use on COVID-19 misinformation engagement depend on individual differences in cognition and personality traits.
Methods:
We use data from an online survey panel administered by a survey agency (Qualtrics) in Singapore. The survey was conducted in March 2022, and 500 respondents answered the survey. All participants were above 21 years of age and provided consent before taking part in the study. We use linear regression, mediation, and moderated mediation analyses to explore the proposed relationships between social media news use, cognitive ability, personality traits, and COVID-19 misinformation belief and sharing intentions.
Results:
The results suggest that those who frequently rely on social media for news consumption are more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation and share it on social media. Further probing the mechanism suggests that social media news use translates into sharing intent via belief in misinformation. Simply put, social media news users share COVID-19 misinformation because they believe it to be accurate. We also find those with high levels of extraversion are more likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate and share them. Neurotic and open individuals are also likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate. Finally, it is observed that personality traits do not significantly influence misinformation sharing at higher levels of cognitive ability but low cognitive users largely drive misinformation sharing.
Conclusions:
The reliance on social media platforms for news consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified, with dire consequences for misinformation sharing. This study shows that increased social media news consumption is associated with believing and sharing COVID-19 misinformation with low cognitive users being the most vulnerable. We offer recommendations to newsmakers, social media moderators, and policymakers towards efforts in limiting COVID-19 misinformation propagation and safeguard citizens.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.