Dataset Information

TV News and COVID-19: Media Influence on Healthy Behavior in Public Spaces.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 outbreak has dramatically changed our life. Despite the rapid growth of scientific publications about medical aspects of the pandemic, less has been explored about the effects of media communication regarding COVID-19 on healthy behaviors. Yet, the scientific literature has widely debated on how media can influence people's health-related evaluations, emotions, and behaviors. To fill this gap, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between media exposure, people's attitudes and emotions toward media contents, and healthy behaviors related to the use of public spaces, such as avoiding crowded places, wearing face masks, and maintaining social distance. A questionnaire referring to these variables was administered to an opportunistic sample of 174 participants in Italy during the off-peak period of the COVID-19 outbreak and before restrictions to mobility were extended to the whole country. Results showed that media exposure, the perception of social initiatives of prevention, and moderate levels of fear increase healthier behaviors in the use of public spaces. Perceiving alarming information did not significantly predict healthy behaviors in the use of public spaces. Results are discussed with reference to the previous literature. Suggestions to media communication to increase preventive behaviors during emergencies are also provided.

SUBMITTER: Scopelliti M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7919256 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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TV News and COVID-19: Media Influence on Healthy Behavior in Public Spaces.

Scopelliti Massimiliano M Pacilli Maria Giuseppina MG Aquino Antonio A

International journal of environmental research and public health 20210215 4

The COVID-19 outbreak has dramatically changed our life. Despite the rapid growth of scientific publications about medical aspects of the pandemic, less has been explored about the effects of media communication regarding COVID-19 on healthy behaviors. Yet, the scientific literature has widely debated on how media can influence people's health-related evaluations, emotions, and behaviors. To fill this gap, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between media exposure, people' ...[more]

PMID: 33671977

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Project description:BackgroundSocial media is widely used as a source of news and information regarding COVID-19. However, the abundance of misinformation on social media platforms has raised concerns regarding the spreading infodemic. Accordingly, many have questioned the utility and impact of social media news use on users' engagement with (mis)information.ObjectiveThis study offers a conceptual framework for how social media news use influences COVID-19 misinformation engagement. More specifically, we examined how news consumption on social media leads to COVID-19 misinformation sharing by inducing belief in such misinformation. We further explored if the effects of social media news use on COVID-19 misinformation engagement depend on individual differences in cognition and personality traits.MethodsWe used data from an online survey panel administered by a survey agency (Qualtrics) in Singapore. The survey was conducted in March 2022, and 500 respondents answered the survey. All participants were older than 21 years and provided consent before taking part in the study. We used linear regression, mediation, and moderated mediation analyses to explore the proposed relationships between social media news use, cognitive ability, personality traits, and COVID-19 misinformation belief and sharing intentions.ResultsThe results suggested that those who frequently used social media for news consumption were more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation and share it on social media. Further probing the mechanism suggested that social media news use translated into sharing intent via the perceived accuracy of misinformation. Simply put, social media news users shared COVID-19 misinformation because they believed it to be accurate. We also found that those with high levels of extraversion than those with low levels were more likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate and share it. Those with high levels of neuroticism and openness than those with low levels were also likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate. Finally, it was observed that personality traits did not significantly influence misinformation sharing at higher levels of cognitive ability, but low cognitive users largely drove misinformation sharing across personality traits.ConclusionsThe reliance on social media platforms for news consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified, with dire consequences for misinformation sharing. This study shows that increased social media news consumption is associated with believing and sharing COVID-19 misinformation, with low cognitive users being the most vulnerable. We offer recommendations to newsmakers, social media moderators, and policymakers toward efforts in limiting COVID-19 misinformation propagation and safeguarding citizens.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Society always has limited resources to expend on health care, or anything else. What are the unmet medical needs? How do we allocate limited resources to maximize the health and welfare of the people? These challenging questions might be re-examined systematically within an infodemiological frame on a much larger scale, leveraging the latest advancement in information technology and data science. OBJECTIVE:We expanded our previous work by investigating news media data to reveal the coverage of different diseases and medical conditions, together with their sentiments and topics in news articles over three decades. We were motivated to do so since news media plays a significant role in politics and affects the public policy making. METHODS:We analyzed over 3.5 million archive news articles from Reuters media during the periods of 1996/1997, 2008 and 2016, using summary statistics, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling. Summary statistics illustrated the coverage of various diseases and medical conditions during the last 3 decades. Sentiment analysis and topic modeling helped us automatically detect the sentiments of news articles (ie, positive versus negative) and topics (ie, a series of keywords) associated with each disease over time. RESULTS:The percentages of news articles mentioning diseases and medical conditions were 0.44%, 0.57% and 0.81% in the three time periods, suggesting that news media or the public has gradually increased its interests in medicine since 1996. Certain diseases such as other malignant neoplasm (34%), other infectious diseases (20%), and influenza (11%) represented the most covered diseases. Two hundred and twenty-six diseases and medical conditions (97.8%) were found to have neutral or negative sentiments in the news articles. Using topic modeling, we identified meaningful topics on these diseases and medical conditions. For instance, the smoking theme appeared in the news articles on other malignant neoplasm only during 1996/1997. The topic phrases HIV and Zika virus were linked to other infectious diseases during 1996/1997 and 2016, respectively. CONCLUSIONS:The multi-dimensional analysis of news media data allows the discovery of focus, sentiments and topics of news media in terms of diseases and medical conditions. These infodemiological discoveries could shed light on unmet medical needs and research priorities for future and provide guidance for the decision making in public policy.

Dataset Information

TV News and COVID-19: Media Influence on Healthy Behavior in Public Spaces.

Publications

TV News and COVID-19: Media Influence on Healthy Behavior in Public Spaces.

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