Social Media News Use and COVID-19 Misinformation Engagement: Survey Study.

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 examined how news consumption on social media leads to COVID-19 misinformation sharing by inducing belief in such misinformation. We further explored if the effects of social media news use on COVID-19 misinformation engagement depend on individual differences in cognition and personality traits. METHODS: We used 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 older than 21 years and provided consent before taking part in the study. We used 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 suggested that those who frequently used social media for news consumption were more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation and share it on social media. Further probing the mechanism suggested that social media news use translated into sharing intent via the perceived accuracy of misinformation. Simply put, social media news users shared COVID-19 misinformation because they believed it to be accurate. We also found that those with high levels of extraversion than those with low levels were more likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate and share it. Those with high levels of neuroticism and openness than those with low levels were also likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate. Finally, it was observed that personality traits did not significantly influence misinformation sharing at higher levels of cognitive ability, but low cognitive users largely drove misinformation sharing across personality traits. 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 toward efforts in limiting COVID-19 misinformation propagation and safeguarding citizens.

Not All Conservatives Are Vaccine Hesitant: Examining the Influence of Misinformation Exposure, Political Ideology, and Flu Vaccine Acceptance on COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy.

Despite the mass availability of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States, many Americans are still reluctant to take a vaccine as an outcome from exposure to misinformation. Additionally, while scholars have paid attention to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, the influence of general vaccine hesitancy for important viruses such as the flu has largely been ignored. Using nationally representative data from Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel survey (Wave 79), this study examined the relationship between perceived misinformation exposure, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, flu vaccine acceptance, political ideology, and demographic trends. The findings suggest that those who accepted the flu vaccine were less likely to be COVID-19 vaccine-hesitant. In addition, moderation analyses showed that perceived misinformation exposure increases COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for conservatives and moderates but not for liberals. However, perceived misinformation exposure influences COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among conservatives only if they are also flu vaccine-hesitant. Perceived misinformation exposure has no role in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy if individuals (irrespective of political ideology) are regular with their flu vaccine. The results suggest that the effect of misinformation exposure on negative attitudes toward COVID-19 may be associated with generalized vaccine hesitancy (e.g., flu). The practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Examining the association between social media fatigue, cognitive ability, narcissism and misinformation sharing: cross-national evidence from eight countries.

Several studies have explored the causes and consequences of public engagement with misinformation and, more recently, COVID-19 misinformation. However, there is still a need to understand the mechanisms that cause misinformation propagation on social media. In addition, evidence from non-Western societies remains rare. This study reports on survey evidence from eight countries to examine whether social media fatigue can influence users to believe misinformation, influencing their sharing intentions. Our insights also build on prior cognitive and personality literature by exploring how this mechanism is conditional upon users' cognitive ability and narcissism traits. The results suggest that social media fatigue can influence false beliefs of misinformation which translates into sharing on social media. We also find that those with high levels of cognitive ability are less likely to believe and share misinformation. However, those with low cognitive ability and high levels of narcissism are most likely to share misinformation on social media due to social media fatigue. This study is one of the first to provide cross-national comparative evidence highlighting the adverse effects of social media fatigue on misinformation propagation and establishing that the relationship is not universal but dependent on both cognitive and dark personality traits of individuals.

Incivility in COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Discourse and Moral Foundations: Natural Language Processing Approach.

BACKGROUND: Vaccine hesitancy poses a substantial threat to efforts to mitigate the harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. To combat vaccine hesitancy, officials in the United States issued vaccine mandates, which were met with strong antivaccine discourse on social media platforms such as Reddit. The politicized and polarized nature of COVID-19 on social media has fueled uncivil discourse related to vaccine mandates, which is known to decrease confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. OBJECTIVE: This study examines the moral foundations underlying uncivil COVID-19 vaccine discourse. Moral foundations theory poses that individuals make decisions to express approval or disapproval (ie, uncivil discourse) based on innate moral values. We examine whether moral foundations are associated with dimensions of incivility. Further, we explore whether there are any differences in the presence of incivility between the r/coronaviruscirclejerk and r/lockdownskepticism subreddits. METHODS: Natural language processing methodologies were leveraged to analyze the moral foundations underlying uncivil discourse in 2 prominent antivaccine subreddits, r/coronaviruscirclejerk and r/lockdownskepticism. All posts and comments from both of the subreddits were collected since their inception in March 2022. This was followed by filtering the data set for key terms associated with the COVID-19 vaccine (eg, "vaccinate" and "Pfizer") and mandates (eg, "forced" and "mandating"). These key terms were selected based on a review of existing literature and because of their salience in both of the subreddits. A 10% sample of the filtered key terms was used for the final analysis. RESULTS: Findings suggested that moral foundations play a role in the psychological processes underlying uncivil vaccine mandate discourse. Specifically, we found substantial associations between all moral foundations (ie, care and harm, fairness and cheating, loyalty and betrayal, authority and subversion, and sanctity and degradation) and dimensions of incivility (ie, toxicity, insults, profanity, threat, and identity attack) except for the authority foundation. We also found statistically significant differences between r/coronaviruscirclejerk and r/lockdownskepticism for the presence of the dimensions of incivility. Specifically, the mean of identity attack, insult, toxicity, profanity, and threat in the r/lockdownskepticism subreddit was significantly lower than that in the r/coronaviruscirclejerk subreddit (P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that moral foundations may play a substantial role in the presence of incivility in vaccine discourse. On the basis of the findings of the study, public health practitioners should tailor messaging by addressing the moral values underlying the concerns people may have about vaccines, which could manifest as uncivil discourse. Another way to tailor public health messaging could be to direct it to parts of social media platforms with increased uncivil discourse. By integrating moral foundations, public health messaging may increase compliance and promote civil discourse surrounding COVID-19.

Social Media News Use Induces COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Through Skepticism Regarding Its Efficacy: A Longitudinal Study From the United States.

There are mounting concerns about the adverse effects of social media on the public understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic and its potential effects on vaccination coverage. Yet early studies have focused on generic social media use and been based on cross-sectional data limiting any causal inferences. This study is among the first to provide causal support for the speculation that social media news use leads to vaccine hesitancy among US citizens. This two-wave survey study was conducted in the US using Qualtrics online panel-based recruitment. We employ mediation and moderated mediation analyses to test our assumptions. The results suggest that using social media to consume news content can translate into vaccine hesitancy by increasing citizens' skepticism regarding the efficacy of vaccines. However, these effects are contingent upon the news literacy of users, as the effects on vaccine hesitancy are more substantial among those with lower news literacy. The current study recommends to public policymakers and vaccine communication strategists that any attempt to reduce vaccine hesitancy in society should factor in the adverse effects of social media news use that can increase vaccine safety concerns.

Emotions and Incivility in Vaccine Mandate Discourse: Natural Language Processing Insights.

Background: Despite vaccine availability, vaccine hesitancy has inhibited public health officials' efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Although some US elected officials have responded by issuing vaccine mandates, others have amplified vaccine hesitancy by broadcasting messages that minimize vaccine efficacy. The politically polarized nature of COVID-19 information on social media has given rise to incivility, wherein health attitudes often hinge more on political ideology than science. Objective: To the best of our knowledge, incivility has not been studied in the context of discourse regarding COVID-19 vaccines and mandates. Specifically, there is little focus on the psychological processes that elicit uncivil vaccine discourse and behaviors. Thus, we investigated 3 psychological processes theorized to predict discourse incivility-namely, anxiety, anger, and sadness. Methods: We used 2 different natural language processing approaches: (1) the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count computational tool and (2) the Google Perspective application programming interface (API) to analyze a data set of 8014 tweets containing terms related to COVID-19 vaccine mandates from September 14, 2021, to October 1, 2021. To collect the tweets, we used the Twitter API Tweet Downloader Tool (version 2). Subsequently, we filtered through a data set of 375,000 vaccine-related tweets using keywords to extract tweets explicitly focused on vaccine mandates. We relied on the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count computational tool to measure the valence of linguistic anger, sadness, and anxiety in the tweets. To measure dimensions of post incivility, we used the Google Perspective API. Results: This study resolved discrepant operationalizations of incivility by introducing incivility as a multifaceted construct and explored the distinct emotional processes underlying 5 dimensions of discourse incivility. The findings revealed that 3 types of emotions-anxiety, anger, and sadness-were uniquely associated with dimensions of incivility (eg, toxicity, severe toxicity, insult, profanity, threat, and identity attacks). Specifically, the results showed that anger was significantly positively associated with all dimensions of incivility (all P<.001), whereas sadness was significantly positively related to threat (P=.04). Conversely, anxiety was significantly negatively associated with identity attack (P=.03) and profanity (P=.02). Conclusions: The results suggest that our multidimensional approach to incivility is a promising alternative to understanding and intervening in the psychological processes underlying uncivil vaccine discourse. Understanding specific emotions that can increase or decrease incivility such as anxiety, anger, and sadness can enable researchers and public health professionals to develop effective interventions against uncivil vaccine discourse. Given the need for real-time monitoring and automated responses to the spread of health information and misinformation on the web, social media platforms can harness the Google Perspective API to offer users immediate, automated feedback when it detects that a comment is uncivil.