Stratified Impacts of the Infodemic During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-sectional Survey in 6 Asian Jurisdictions

The unintended negative consequences of knowledge translation in healthcare: A systematic scoping review

Knowledge translation represents an avenue to address the oft-cited chasm between what should and what does happen in healthcare. Knowledge translation encompasses myriad processes through which different knowledges coalesce to inform practice. However, some reports suggest that experiences with knowledge translation are less than favourable. To better understand these experiences, a systematic scoping review of academic literature was conducted to unveil the unintended negative consequences of knowledge translation and how they were addressed. After screening 9,598 publications, six reported evidence of unintended negative consequences. The most prevalent was emotional labour - negative emotional or psychological sequelae, depression, anxiety, powerlessness, and frustration. These consequences were experienced by knowledge translation brokers, knowledge translation recipients, and knowledge translation producers. All but one publication offered some discussion of strategies to manage or mitigate these unintended negative consequences, including co-design, collaboration, and supported dialogue. These findings suggest there is limited research that explicates the unintended negative consequences of knowledge translation. Given the importance of knowledge translation, this review indicates there is considerable opportunity to advance it, in a better-informed way. Only by considering the unintended negative consequences of knowledge translation can they be identified, addressed, and potentially moderated, if not averted.

How Does Digital Media Search for COVID-19 Influence Vaccine Hesitancy? Exploring the Trade-off between Google Trends, Infodemics, Conspiracy Beliefs and Religious Fatalism

Digital media has remained problematic during COVID-19 because it has been the source of false and unverified facts. This was particularly evident in the widespread misinformation and confusion regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. Past research suggested infodemics, conspiracy beliefs, and religious fatalism as potential threats to public COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. However, the literature is primarily void of empirical evidence associating demographic attributes with efforts to build vaccine hesitancy. Therefore, this research uses two studies: (Study 1) Google Trends and (Study 2) survey method to provide inclusive empirical insight into public use of digital media during COVID-19 and the detrimental effects of infodemics, conspiracy beliefs, and religious fatalism as they were related to building COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Using Google Trends based on popular keywords the public searched over one year, Study 1 explores public digital media use during COVID-19. Drawing on this exploration, Study 2 used a cross-sectional national representative survey of 2120 adult Pakistanis to describe the influence of potential hazards such as infodemics on public vaccine hesitancy. Study 2 revealed that infodemics, conspiracy beliefs, and religious fatalism predict vaccine hesitancy. In addition, gender moderates the relationship between infodemics and conspiracy beliefs and vaccine hesitancy. This implies that there is a dispositional effect of the infodemics and conspiracy beliefs spread digitally. This study's findings benefit health and other concerned authorities to help them reduce religious fatalism, vaccine hesitancy, and conspiracy theories with targeted communication campaigns on digital media.

Contextualized impacts of an infodemic on vaccine hesitancy: The moderating role of socioeconomic and cultural factors

This study examines how perceived information overload and misinformation affect vaccine hesitancy and how this is moderated by structural and cultural factors. By applying and extending the fundamental cause theory, this study proposes a contextualized impact model to analyze a cross-national survey of 6034 residents in six societies in Asia, Europe and North America in June 2021. The study finds that (1) Older and highly-educated participants were less susceptible to COVID-19 information overload and belief in vaccine misinformation. (2) Perceived information overload led to an increase in vaccine acceptance and uptake, whereas belief in vaccine misinformation caused a decrease. (3) The structural differentiation of vaccine hesitancy was salient and higher socioeconomic status could buffer the negative impact of misinformation on vaccine acceptance. (4) Cultural factors such as collectivism and authoritarian mentality also served as buffers against the misinformation that reduced vaccine acceptance and uptake. These findings add nuanced footnotes to the fundamental causes theory and contribute to the discussion on the global recovery from the infodemic. Besides fact-checking and improving individual information literacy, effective and long-term information management and health policies must pay attention to stratified information gaps across socioeconomic groups, and to contextualize the communication and intervention strategies in different cultures.