JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Amidst the widespread global COVID-19 pandemic, social media have played a pivotal role in the circulation of health information. Public health agencies often use Twitter as a tool to disseminate and amplify the propagation of such information [1], but exposure to local government-endorsed COVID-19 public health information does not make one immune to believing in misinformation. Moreover, not all health information on Twitter is accurate, and some users may believe misinformation and disinformation just as much as those who endorse more accurate information [2]. This situation is complicated when considering the unfortunate reality that elected officials may be promoting misinformation in pursuit of their other political agendas, like downplaying the need for COVID-19 restrictions to promote their reelection bid [3]. The politicized and polarized nature of information surrounding COVID-19 on social media in the U.S. has fueled a concomitant COVID-19 social media infodemic [4-6]. As such, because pre-existing political beliefs can both facilitate and hinder persuasion [7,8], goal understanding processes are likely at work in the belief of COVID-19 misinformation for Twitter users, such that the valence of users’ goal inferences for their local government agencies likely impact the extent to which they believe state government-endorsed COVID-19 information disseminated via social media.

Objective:

The present investigation sheds light on the cognitive processes of goal understanding that underlie the relationship between partisanship and belief in health misinformation. We investigate how Twitter users’ goal inference valence of local government’s COVID-19 efforts predicts their beliefs in COVID-19 misinformation as a function of their political party.

Methods:

We conducted an online cross-sectional survey of U.S. Twitter users who followed their state’s official department of public health Twitter (n=258) between August 10 and December 23, 2020. Local government goal inferences, demographics, and COVID-19 misinformation were measured. State political affiliation was controlled.

Results:

Participants from all 50 states were in the sample. Results revealed an interaction between political party affiliation and goal inference valence on belief in covid misinformation, R2∆ = .04, F(8,249) = 4.78, p < .001, such that positive goal inference valence predicted increased belief in COVID-19 misinformation for Republicans, β=.47, t(249) = 2.59, p = 0.01 but not Democrats, β= .07, t(249) = 0.84, p = 0.40.

Conclusions:

Results reveal that positive inferences about local government’s COVID-19 efforts can accelerate beliefs in misinformation for Republican-identifying constituents. Republicans’ inferences that their local government has positive intentions may make republican constituents more vulnerable to republican-endorsed COVID-19 misinformation. In other words, accurate COVID-19 transmission knowledge has been driven by constituents' sentiment about politicians rather than science. This work stresses the need for health campaigns to be sensitive to the preexisting political affiliation of their target audience when constructing persuasive health messages.