JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

As social media platforms have become significant sources of information during the pandemic, a significant volume of both factual and inaccurate information related to the prevention of COVID-19 was disseminated through social media. Thus, disparities in COVID-19 information verification across populations had the potential to promote the dissemination of misinformation among clustered groups of people with similar characteristics.

Objective:

This study aimed to identify population characteristics of social media users who were (1) most likely to change their behaviors according to information obtained through social media and (2) were least likely to actively verify the accuracy of COVID-19 information obtained through social media, as these individuals may be susceptible to inaccurate COVID-19 prevention measures and exacerbate its transmission.

Methods:

An online questionnaire consisting of 17 questions was disseminated by West China Hospital via three online platforms (Wechat, Weibo, and TikTok) since May 18th, 2020. The questionnaire collected sociodemographic information and included questions surveying participants’ knowledge about COVID-19, personal social media usage, health behavior change tendencies, and information cross-verification behaviors during the pandemic. Multiple stepwise regression models were used to examine the relationships between social media use, behavior changes, and information cross-verification.

Results:

Among 14,509 adults, respondents who were most likely to change their health behaviors after obtaining COVID-19 information from social media sources were as follows: females (P<0.001); those older than 40 years (P<0.001); those with a high education level (P<0.05); non-healthcare professionals (P<0.05); those who spend more time (1-5 hours and more than 7 hours, both P<0.001), and higher frequency on social media (P<0.001); those with sufficient COVID-19 knowledge (P<0.001); those who are most likely to search for COVID-19 information from professional media and healthcare media (both P<0.001); and those who reported a higher level of trust in celebrities media more than 1 rating score (P<0.05). Furthermore, among participants who were most likely to change their health behaviors according to social media information, females (P<0.001), with lower self-reported healthcare literacy(P<0.001), less frequently sought COVID-19 information on social media (P<0.001), reported a high level of trust towards celebrities’ social media accounts more than 1 rating score (P<0.001) were associated with lack of cross-verification information.

Conclusions:

We suggest that governments, healthcare agencies, physicians, and technicians combined their efforts to decrease the risk of vulnerable groups that are inclined to change health behaviors according to web-based information but don’t do any fast-check verification of the accuracy of the information. More specifically, it is necessary to correct the falsehoods related to the COVID-19 on social media, increase netizens’ awareness of information cross-verification and eHealth literacy to evaluate the veracity of Web-based information. Clinical Trial: NA