The causes and consequences of COVID-19 misperceptions: Understanding the role of news and social media
By Aengus Bridgman, Eric Merkley, P. Loewen, Taylor Owen, Derek Ruths, Lisa Teichmann, Oleg Zhilin. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 2020
385 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We investigate the relationship between media consumption, misinformation, and important attitudes and behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. We find that comparatively more misinformation circulates on social media platforms, while traditional news media tend to reinforce public health recommendations like social distancing. We find that exposure to social media is associated with misperceptions about COVID-19 while the inverse is true for news media. These misperceptions are in turn associated with lower compliance with social distancing measures. We thus draw a link from misinformation on social media to behaviours and attitudes that potentially magnify the scale and lethality of COVID-19.
Subfields: Communication, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e3475a3705e0fab985e79d9c6c3caabf9043133f
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Citations in the corpus
- The different forms of COVID-19 misinformation and their consequences (2020, background): “Moreover, numerous pieces of misinformation have gained traction (e.g., Bridgman et al., 2020), including false claims about the medicinal properties of disinfectants, hydroxychloroquine, and ultraviolet light.”
- Effects of COVID-19 Misinformation on Information Seeking, Avoidance, and Processing: A Multicountry Comparative Study (2020, background): “Researchers have addressed the potential consequences of misinformation that could undermine the adoption of preventive measures (Bridgman et al., 2020; Dixon & Clarke, 2012; Tan et al., 2015), which could exacerbate the spread of the epidemic.”