Characterizing the COVID-19 Infodemic on Chinese Social Media: Exploratory Study

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 infodemic has been disseminating rapidly on social media and posing a significant threat to people’s health and governance systems. Objective This study aimed to investigate and analyze posts related to COVID-19 misinformation on major Chinese social media platforms in order to characterize the COVID-19 infodemic. Methods We collected posts related to COVID-19 misinformation published on major Chinese social media platforms from January 20 to May 28, 2020, by using PythonToolkit. We used content analysis to identify the quantity and source of prevalent posts and topic modeling to cluster themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic. Furthermore, we explored the quantity, sources, and theme characteristics of the COVID-19 infodemic over time. Results The daily number of social media posts related to the COVID-19 infodemic was positively correlated with the daily number of newly confirmed (r=0.672, P<.01) and newly suspected (r=0.497, P<.01) COVID-19 cases. The COVID-19 infodemic showed a characteristic of gradual progress, which can be divided into 5 stages: incubation, outbreak, stalemate, control, and recovery. The sources of the COVID-19 infodemic can be divided into 5 types: chat platforms (1100/2745, 40.07%), video-sharing platforms (642/2745, 23.39%), news-sharing platforms (607/2745, 22.11%), health care platforms (239/2745, 8.71%), and Q&A platforms (157/2745, 5.72%), which slightly differed at each stage. The themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic were clustered into 8 categories: “conspiracy theories” (648/2745, 23.61%), “government response” (544/2745, 19.82%), “prevention action” (411/2745, 14.97%), “new cases” (365/2745, 13.30%), “transmission routes” (244/2745, 8.89%), “origin and nomenclature” (228/2745, 8.30%), “vaccines and medicines” (154/2745, 5.61%), and “symptoms and detection” (151/2745, 5.50%), which were prominently diverse at different stages. Additionally, the COVID-19 infodemic showed the characteristic of repeated fluctuations. Conclusions Our study found that the COVID-19 infodemic on Chinese social media was characterized by gradual progress, videoization, and repeated fluctuations. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the COVID-19 infodemic is paralleled to the propagation of the COVID-19 epidemic. We have tracked the COVID-19 infodemic across Chinese social media, providing critical new insights into the characteristics of the infodemic and pointing out opportunities for preventing and controlling the COVID-19 infodemic.

Perspectives on Mass Media and Governmental Measures during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic in a Romanian Sample of Healthcare Practitioners

“…In line with studies highlighting the overwhelming or inaccurate character of information on public health issues in the COVID-19 era [ 6 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 34 ], overall results in our sample pointed to a primarily negative appraisal of mass-media information. In addition, consistent with previous studies [ 29 , 30 , 32 , 37 ], perceiving information as not useful, insufficient, or not good was related to relaxation difficulties and anxiety.…”

“…According to the World Health Organization, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated an infodemic (i.e., an abundance of digital or physical information that includes false or misleading news and causes confusion, disinformation, insecurity, and mistrust in government officials and health authorities) [ 1 ]. Besides mass media, the rapid spread of information through the Internet and social media contributed significantly to this phenomenon and hindered accurate and reliable information [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. A meta-analysis on mainstream and social media information sources reflected the infodemic’s expansion, revealing 2311 reports from 87 countries containing COVID-19 related information, of which 82% were false [ 7 ].…”

“…Romania, whose 2020 volume index of GDP per capita was about 30% below the average of EU countries [ 10 ], reaching 12,896 USD per capita, would therefore qualify as a poorer EU country. Among the implications of the infodemic, in Romania, we observed several phenomena that were documented worldwide: the proliferation of rumors about false treatment or prophylactic methods [ 6 , 11 , 12 , 13 ], the emergence of extremist discourse and conspiracy theories [ 5 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], and vaccine acceptance vs. hesitancy [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. The need to empirically investigate such observations and the lack of COVID-19-related research on Romanian samples represented motivations for the present study.…”

“I enjoy thinking critically, and I'm in control”: Examining the influences of media literacy factors on misperceptions amidst the COVID-19 infodemic

“…Admittedly, China has been in the epicenter of public opinions since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its scientific community has been playing a role in governing the infodemic. However, only a handful of infodemic studies has been contextualized in China, explicating the spread of misinformation and the formation of misperceptions among Chinese people (e.g., Su et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ). Contextualizing in China would not only help revisit media effects largely confirmed in the Western context, but also heed the call to include developing countries to mitigate the asymmetry of contextualization in communication research ( Adjei-Bamfo et al, 2019 ).…”

Is It All a Conspiracy? Conspiracy Theories and People’s Attitude to COVID-19 Vaccination

“…With the global spread of COVID-19, many conspiracy theories are dominant in China. These include both COVID-19-related conspiracy theories (such as SARS-CoV-2 being leaked from a Wuhan virology laboratory or that the virus was of foreign origin [ 31 ]) and vaccine-related theories (such as pharmaceutical companies covered up the danger of vaccines or people are being deceived about the effectiveness of vaccines [ 32 ]).…”