Abstract
COVID-19 pandemic has piqued the research interest of medical professionals and social scientists. In social sciences COVID-19 based political campaigns and trends on social media have extended their implications in the domain of political communication. The dissemination of COVID-19 news on social media is widespread, however, the political factors influencing the spread of such news are less discussed. To explore these factors, we evaluated empirical data from 390 social media users in Pakistan by applying PLS-SEM modeling. Snowball sampling was implied to collect the data. Political interest, partisanship, political knowledge, and political efficacy were incorporated as antecedents of COVID-19 news sharing on social media. Major findings show political interest as the most significant antecedent of COVID-19 news sharing followed by political knowledge and partisanship. However, political efficacy did not display any significant influence on participants’ intentions of sharing COVID-19 news via social media. Based on the findings, theoretical and policy implications are suggested. Keywords: Social Media; COVID-19 News Sharing; Political Interest; Partisanship; Political Knowledge; Political Efficacy
Highlights
COVID-19 is a continuing threat for international public health which has ramified into economic, psychological and sociopolitical spheres
We proposed the following hypothesis: H3: Political knowledge will significantly influence the user’s intention to share COVID-19 news on social media
Snowball sampling was suitable because the sample frame did not work, and the population members were difficult to locate in the field (Bobbie, 2013) because of the COVID-19 spread
Summary
COVID-19 is a continuing threat for international public health which has ramified into economic, psychological and sociopolitical spheres. Unemployment (Blustein et al, 2020), food crisis (Toffolutti et al, 2020), and shortage of medicines (Romano et al, 2021) developed catastrophic situation. While this infection was posing a serious risk, politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic grabbed the attention, and public view has been divided along political ideological lines. The politicization of COVID-19 news coverage further amplified the political influences and widened these political lines. The penetration of social media among masses proliferated the spread and effect of COVID-19 related news (Ward et al, 2020)
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