Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: From Mainstream Media to Social Media

Abstract

Misinformation, which refers to false or misleading information, has drawn increasing attention in recent years and has been identified as a threat to public health. Misinformation’s impact can be felt at multiple levels. Belief in misinformation can have several negative impacts, including people holding policy preferences that are different from those that they would hold if they were correctly informed, which can impact voting behavior, and in turn, public policy including public health policy. Misinformation can also impact health directly by influencing whether people engage in health-protective behaviors and indirectly by sharing health information within their social networks. This dissertation addresses several gaps in the literature related to the spread of and belief in health misinformation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 1 assessed whether three factors previously shown to be associated with belief in misinformation – conservative media use, anti-intellectualism, and conspiratorial thinking – are associated with health misinformation and whether their associations vary based on the type of health misinformation. The two pieces of health misinformation included in this study were: (1) that childhood vaccines cause autism; and (2) that hydroxychloroquine is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19. Analyzing two-wave panel data from the 2020 American National Election Studies, Study 1 found that anti-intellectualism and conspiratorial thinking were positively associated with belief in both pieces of misinformation, whereas the use of conservative media was positively associated only with belief that hydroxychloroquine is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19. Study 2 explored the agenda-setting effects of mainstream news media coverage on public salience of public health misinformation. This study analyzed the association between news media coverage and public salience of three different pieces of COVID-19 misinformation: (1) hydroxychloroquine is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19; (2) the COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility; and (3) ivermectin is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19. Salience was measured by Google Trends relative search volume (RSV). News media coverage volume was a significant predictor of same-day RSV for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, but not for vaccines and infertility, indicating mainstream news media coverage may contribute to the public salience of certain forms of misinformation. Study 3 explored the health behaviors and information sources of social media health mavens, individuals who provide and share health information with their networks via social media. This study also investigated whether social media health mavens are more likely to believe health misinformation than non-mavens. Using data from a cross-sectional survey among Ipsos KnowledgePanel® members collected during the summer of 2020, Study 3 found that healthier diet and exercise habits; being an occasional smoker; and using liberal and mainstream news sources were associated with higher odds of being a social media health maven. Social media health mavens were no more likely than non-social media mavens to believe COVID-19 misinformation. This dissertation contributes to the literature on the spread of and belief in health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taken together, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that the mainstream media can contribute to the salience of and belief in public health misinformation, but that several factors such as novelty, politicization, and volume of media coverage may influence this relationship. Study 3 found that social media health mavens are not more likely to believe misinformation, but future research should explore what information they actually share with their social media networks.