The Relationship Between News Coverage of COVID-19 Misinformation and Online Search Behavior

被引:1
|
作者
Douglas-Durham, Ella [1 ]
Tan, Andy S. L. [2 ,3 ,4 ]
Emmons, Karen M. [1 ]
Viswanath, Kasisomayajula [1 ,5 ]
机构
[1] Harvard Univ, Harvard TH Chan Sch Publ Hlth, Dept Social & Behav Sci, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 USA
[2] Univ Penn, Annenberg Sch Commun, Philadelphia, PA USA
[3] Univ Penn, Leonard Davis Inst Hlth Econ, Philadelphia, PA USA
[4] Abramson Canc Ctr, Tobacco & Environm Carcinogenesis Program, Philadelphia, PA USA
[5] Dana Farber Canc Inst, Div Populat Sci, Boston, MA USA
关键词
UNITED-STATES; HEALTH; NEED;
D O I
10.1080/10410236.2024.2395155
中图分类号
G2 [信息与知识传播];
学科分类号
05 ; 0503 ;
摘要
The spread of health misinformation poses a threat to public health as it can influence individuals' health beliefs and, potentially, behaviors, and their support for public health policies. The mainstream news media have the potential to inadvertently increase the salience of misinformation through their reporting. This study explores the agenda-setting effects of mainstream news media coverage on public salience of public health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed the association between news media coverage and public salience - as measured by Google Trends relative search volume - of three different pieces of COVID-19 misinformation: (1) hydroxychloroquine is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19; (2) the COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility; and (3) ivermectin is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19. We plotted news coverage of each piece of misinformation against Google Trends relative search volume over time. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models were used to account for autocorrelation and analyze the relationship between the two time series. News media coverage volume was a significant predictor of same-day relative search volume for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The relationship between news media coverage and searches for COVID-19 vaccines and infertility was not significant. These findings indicate mainstream news media coverage may contribute to the public salience of misinformation. Mainstream media outlets should contextualize their reporting on misinformation with verification from scientific consensus.
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收藏
页数:9
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