Social Media and Health Misinformation during the US COVID Crisis

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2008.05271v1
• Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:42:57 GMT
• Title: Social Media and Health Misinformation during the US COVID Crisis
• Abstract summary: Social media can play a role in limiting and refuting health misinformation. Using as a case study US President Donald Trump's controversial comments about the promise and power of UV light- and disinfectant-based treatments, this data memo examines how these comments were discussed and responded to on Twitter. We find that these comments fell into established politically partisan narratives and dominated discussion of both politics and COVID in the days following.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Health misinformation has been found to be prevalent on social media, particularly in new public health crises in which there is limited scientific information. However, social media can also play a role in limiting and refuting health misinformation. Using as a case study US President Donald Trump's controversial comments about the promise and power of UV light- and disinfectant-based treatments, this data memo examines how these comments were discussed and responded to on Twitter. We find that these comments fell into established politically partisan narratives and dominated discussion of both politics and COVID in the days following. Contestation of the comments was much more prevalent than support. Supporters attacked media coverage in line with existing Trump narratives. Contesters responded with humour and shared mainstream media coverage condemning the comments. These practices would have strengthened the original misinformation through repetition and done little to construct a successful refutation for those who might have believed them. This research adds much-needed knowledge to our understanding of the information environment surrounding COVID and demonstrates that, despite calls for the depoliticization of health information in this public health crisis, this is largely being approached as a political issue along divisive, polarised, partisan lines.

Related papers

• Misinformation is not about Bad Facts: An Analysis of the Production and Consumption of Fringe Content [15.57576248694248]
  We examine how far-right and fringe online groups share and leverage established legacy news media articles to advance their narratives. We found that Australian news publishers with both moderate and far-right political leanings contain comparable levels of information completeness and quality. We can identify users prone to sharing misinformation based on their communication style.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-03-13T10:10:07Z)
• The Morbid Realities of Social Media: An Investigation into the Misinformation Shared by the Deceased Victims of COVID-19 [0.4995343972237368]
  We study a unique dataset of Facebook posts by users who shared and believed in Covid-19 misinformation before succumbing to Covid-19 often resulting in death. Our analysis reveals the overwhelming politicization of Covid-19 through the prevalence of anti-government themes. Results from this study bring insights into the responsibility of political elites in shaping public discourse and the platform's role in dampening the reach of harmful misinformation.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-09-20T19:47:27Z)
• Adherence to Misinformation on Social Media Through Socio-Cognitive and Group-Based Processes [79.79659145328856]
  We argue that when misinformation proliferates, this happens because the social media environment enables adherence to misinformation. We make the case that polarization and misinformation adherence are closely tied.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-06-30T12:34:24Z)
• "COVID-19 was a FIFA conspiracy #curropt": An Investigation into the Viral Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation [60.268682953952506]
  We estimate the extent to which misinformation has influenced the course of the COVID-19 pandemic using natural language processing models. We provide a strategy to combat social media posts that are likely to cause widespread harm.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-06-12T19:41:01Z)
• Know it to Defeat it: Exploring Health Rumor Characteristics and Debunking Efforts on Chinese Social Media during COVID-19 Crisis [65.74516068984232]
  We conduct a comprehensive analysis of four months of rumor-related online discussion during COVID-19 on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site. Results suggest that the dread (cause fear) type of health rumors provoked significantly more discussions and lasted longer than the wish (raise hope) type. We show the efficacy of debunking in suppressing rumor discussions, which is time-sensitive and varies across rumor types and debunkers.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-09-25T14:02:29Z)
• Analysis of External Content in the Vaccination Discussion on Twitter [6.458496335718509]
  The spread of coronavirus and anti-vaccine conspiracies online hindered the pandemic. We examined the content of external articles shared on Twitter from February to June 2020.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-07-19T22:47:17Z)
• News consumption and social media regulations policy [70.31753171707005]
  We analyze two social media that enforced opposite moderation methods, Twitter and Gab, to assess the interplay between news consumption and content regulation. Our results show that the presence of moderation pursued by Twitter produces a significant reduction of questionable content. The lack of clear regulation on Gab results in the tendency of the user to engage with both types of content, showing a slight preference for the questionable ones which may account for a dissing/endorsement behavior.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-06-07T19:26:32Z)
• Misinfo Belief Frames: A Case Study on Covid & Climate News [49.979419711713795]
  We propose a formalism for understanding how readers perceive the reliability of news and the impact of misinformation. We introduce the Misinfo Belief Frames (MBF) corpus, a dataset of 66k inferences over 23.5k headlines. Our results using large-scale language modeling to predict misinformation frames show that machine-generated inferences can influence readers' trust in news headlines.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-04-18T09:50:11Z)
• "Thought I'd Share First" and Other Conspiracy Theory Tweets from the COVID-19 Infodemic: Exploratory Study [0.0]
  Health-related misinformation threatens adherence to public health messaging. Monitoring misinformation on social media is critical to understanding the evolution of ideas that have potentially negative public health impacts.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-12-14T17:24:59Z)
• Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic in Social Media: A Holistic Perspective and a Call to Arms [42.7332883578842]
  With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, people turned to social media to read and to share timely information. There was also a new blending of medical and political misinformation and disinformation, which gave rise to the first global infodemic. This is a complex problem that needs a holistic approach combining the perspectives of journalists, fact-checkers, policymakers, government entities, social media platforms, and society as a whole.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-07-15T21:18:30Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.