Abstract
False information about COVID-19 is being produced and disseminated on a large scale, impeding efforts to rapidly impose quarantines. Thus, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic itself, an infodemic related with it is leading to social crises. This study therefore investigates who believes the misinformation that is being produced in the context of COVID-19. We choose two main factors—risk perception factor, so called psychometric paradigm, and communication factor—as independent variables that can affect belief in misinformation related to COVID-19. The results show that, among psychometric variables, perceived risk and stigma positively impact belief in fake news, whereas perceived benefit and trust have negative effects. Among communication factors, source credibility and the quantity of information reduce belief in fake news, whereas the credibility of information sources increases these beliefs. Stigma has the greatest explanatory power among the variables, followed by health status, heuristic information processing, trust, and subjective social class.
Highlights
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people worldwide have faced extreme fear at the individual level and instability at the social level
According to the PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) [2], 361,000,000 videos were uploaded to YouTube under the COVID-19 classification in the last 30 days, and 19,200 articles have been published on Google Scholar since the start of the pandemic
This study investigates who believes in the misinformation related to COVID-19 that is generated in the current infodemic
Summary
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people worldwide have faced extreme fear at the individual level and instability at the social level. Fear paralyzes people’s reason and hinders rational judgment and, as a result, can cause people to believe excessive information, misinformation, and false information rather than objective facts. Such incorrect information serves to further spread fear within a society. In the event of a disaster, people try to gather as much information as possible [1]. This vast amount of data often includes both true and false information. According to the PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) [2], 361,000,000 videos were uploaded to YouTube under the COVID-19 classification in the last 30 days, and 19,200 articles have been published on Google Scholar since the start of the pandemic
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