Concerns over the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media—Challenges Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

Leung, Janni; Schoultz, Mariyana; Chiu, Vivian; Bonsaksen, Tore; Ruffolo, Mary; Thygesen, Hilde; Price, Daicia; Geirdal, Amy Østertun

doi:10.3390/ecerph-3-09078

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Due to the amount of information in the media surrounding the pandemic, it can be difficult for people to filter accurate information from misinformation ( Rathore and Farooq, 2020 ). The amount of “fake news” and misinformation surrounding COVID-19 on social media has been associated with psychological distress across the US, United Kingdom, and Australia (Leung et al., 2020) . There was one study within the reviewed literature that assessed the impact of information uncertainty on acute stress disorder ( Lin et al., 2020a ), finding a significant association.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 news consumption and distress in young people: A systematic review

Strasser

Sumner

Meyer

2022

Journal of Affective Disorders

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Background The COVID-19 pandemic has brought challenges for the mental health of young people. The volume, negative content and potential for misinformation within COVID-19 related news can be an additional cause of distress. This systematic review aims to synthesise the research findings on the relationship between COVID-19 news and distress in young people. Methods Following the PRISMA guidelines, PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO databases were searched on 24 April 2021 for articles that contained empirical research examining the association between COVID-19 news consumption and mental health in samples of young people with a mean age between 10 and 24 years. Results The 13 included studies involved 760,474 participants in predominantly cross-sectional studies, with data collected during COVID-19 lockdowns across seven countries. Increased consumption of COVID-19 news was associated with a decline in mental health ( n = 12). The results were more consistent for news obtained on social media with variation for traditional media sources. Misinformation may further explain the relationship. Limitations Heterogeneity across study methodologies, lack of longitudinal research and validated measures of news consumption. Conclusions The reviewed literature supports the association between increased consumption of COVID-19 related news and decreased mental health in young people. This group may benefit from support to mitigate the psychological impacts of COVID-19 news. Future research should utilise longitudinal designs, ecological momentary assessments, and reliable/valid measures of news consumption to explore the negative mental health associated with COVID-19 news in young people.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 news consumption and distress in young people: A systematic review

Strasser

Sumner

Meyer

2022

Journal of Affective Disorders

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“…Each country had their own project lead, according to the country-specific rules. The survey was developed by the researchers in two languages simultaneously: Norwegian and English, and was based on a previous survey conducted by the research group in the early phase (April 2020) of the pandemic outbreak [ 18 , 19 , 22 , 23 , 24 ] Language and cultural differences were considered during the survey development process. This means that the Norwegian phrasing of each item would convey the same content as the corresponding English item, while considering the different grammatical structures and nuances in the culturally embedded meaning of words allowed us to use the phrase that would most effectively convey the meaning in each of the languages.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the same time, the circulating information can be fused with rumors and misinformation, which can be difficult to differentiate [ 17 ]. The constant stream of coverage about the COVID-19 outbreak, along with the spread of misinformation, creates fear, anxiety and stress [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Moreover, social media use has been shown to relate differently to loneliness among people in different age groups, with more social media use being linked with more loneliness among those of younger age [ 20 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students’ Mental Health, Well-Being, and Loneliness during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-National Study

et al. 2022

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, much research has been devoted to assessing mental health in a variety of populations. Students in higher education appear to be particularly vulnerable to experiencing reduced mental health. The purpose of the study was to assess whether higher education students experienced poorer mental health compared to the general population and examine the factors associated with students’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-national sample of students (n = 354) and non-students (n = 3120) participated in a survey in October/November 2020. Mental health outcomes among students and non-students were compared with independent t-tests. Multiple linear regression analysis and general linear estimation were used to assess the impact of student status on mental health outcomes while adjusting for sociodemographic factors. Students reported poorer mental health than non-students. The difference in mental health between students and non-students was bigger for participants aged 30 years or older. More social media use was associated with poorer mental health outcomes. In conclusion, students had poorer mental health than the wider population. Aspects of life as a student, beyond what can be attributed to life stage, appears to increase mental health problems.

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“…L DC (y, ŷ) = ∑ j y j ln ŷj (5) In L SL (y, ŷ), y i,j is defined as the ground-truth probability of the label j of the word i. We define ŷi,j as the predicted probability of the label j of word i.…”

Section: Bert For Sequence Label and Domain Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, misinformation concerning the COVID-19 vaccine diminishes people's willingness to receive the vaccine [4]. Furthermore, the dispersion of misinformation increases the risk of mental health problems such as depression [5]. To reduce the impact of misinformation, an intuitive system that enables users to easily retrieve medical information from reliable resources is crucial to research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

AidIR: An Interactive Dialog System to Aid Disease Information Retrieval

Wang

Chen

2022

Applied Sciences

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This paper proposes an interactive dialog system, called AidIR, to aid information retrieval. AidIR allows users to retrieve information on diseases resulting from coronaviruses and diseases transmitted by vector mosquitoes with natural language interaction and Line chat media. In a subjective evaluation, we asked 20 users to rate the intuitiveness, usability, and user experience of AidIR with a range between −2 and 2. Moreover, we also asked these users to answer yes–no questions to evaluate AidIR and provide feedback. The average scores of intuitiveness, usability, and user experience are 0.8, 0.8, and 1.05, respectively. The yes–no questions demonstrated that AidIR is better than systems using the graphical user interface in mobile phones and single-turn dialog systems. According to user feedback, AidIR is more convenient for information retrieval. Moreover, we designed a new loss function to jointly train a BERT model for domain classification and sequence label tasks. The accuracy of both tasks is 92%. Finally, we trained the dialog policy network with supervised learning tasks and deployed the reinforcement learning algorithm to allow AidIR to continue learning the dialog policy.

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Concerns over the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media—Challenges Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

Cited by 15 publications

References 23 publications

COVID-19 news consumption and distress in young people: A systematic review

COVID-19 news consumption and distress in young people: A systematic review

Students’ Mental Health, Well-Being, and Loneliness during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-National Study

AidIR: An Interactive Dialog System to Aid Disease Information Retrieval

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