What Drives People to Share Misinformation on Social Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Stimulus-Organism-Response Perspective

[Mis- and disinformation in social media: mitigating risks in digital health communication]

Misinformation and disinformation in social media have become a challenge for effective public health measures. Here, we examine factors that influence believing and sharing false information, both misinformation and disinformation, at individual, social, and contextual levels and discuss intervention possibilities.At the individual level, knowledge deficits, lack of skills, and emotional motivation have been associated with believing in false information. Lower health literacy, a conspiracy mindset and certain beliefs increase susceptibility to false information. At the social level, the credibility of information sources and social norms influence the sharing of false information. At the contextual level, emotions and the repetition of messages affect belief in and sharing of false information.Interventions at the individual level involve measures to improve knowledge and skills. At the social level, addressing social processes and social norms can reduce the sharing of false information. At the contextual level, regulatory approaches involving social networks is considered an important point of intervention.Social inequalities play an important role in the exposure to and processing of misinformation. It remains unclear to which degree the susceptibility to belief in and share misinformation is an individual characteristic and/or context dependent. Complex interventions are required that should take into account multiple influencing factors.

A Serious Game ("Fight With Virus") for Preventing COVID-19 Health Rumors: Development and Experimental Study

BACKGROUND

Health rumors arbitrarily spread in mainstream social media on the internet. Health rumors emerged in China during the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. Many midelders/elders (age over 40 years) who lived in Wuhan believed these rumors.

OBJECTIVE

This study focused on designing a serious game as an experimental program to prevent and control health rumors. The focus of the study was explicitly on the context of the social networking service for midelders/elders.

METHODS

This research involved 2 major parts: adopting the Transmission Control Protocol model for games and then, based on the model, designing a game named "Fight With Virus" as an experimental platform and developing a cognitive questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale. The relevant variables for this experimental study were defined, and 10 hypotheses were proposed and tested with an empirical study. In total, 200 participants were selected for the experiments. By collecting relevant data in the experiments, we conducted statistical observations and comparative analysis to test whether the experimental hypotheses could be proved.

RESULTS

We noted that compared to traditional media, serious games are more capable of inspiring interest in research participants toward their understanding of the knowledge and learning of health commonsense. In judging and recognizing the COVID-19 health rumor, the test group that used game education had a stronger ability regarding identification of the rumor and a higher accuracy rate of identification. Results showed that the more educated midelders/elders are, the more effective they are at using serious games.

CONCLUSIONS

Compared to traditional media, serious games can effectively improve midelders'/elders' cognitive abilities while they face a health rumor. The gameplay effect is related to the individual's age and educational background, while income and gender have no impact.