Background: Social media platforms can be an excellent medium for disseminating public awareness and critical information that can be shared across large populations. However, the increasing use of social media as an information source brings challenges. Misinformation on social media can have immense implications for public health, risking the effectiveness of health interventions and endangering lives. This has become even more evident in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which a range of misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories and propaganda were spread across social channels. Despite a considerable amount of research focusing on misinformation, including many studies concentrating on detecting misinformation and networks on social media from various perspectives and some studies focusing on factors that influence people’s reactions to misinformation, there is a need for a better understanding of how individuals react to and spread information, an improved comprehension of digital literacy, source evaluation, and responsible content consumption and development of effective communication strategies to address health misinformation on social media.
Methodology: The study followed a mixed-method design using the exploratory sequential design. The first study recruited 1014 participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). A questionnaire was conducted to gain insight into how people interact with misinformation during a specific health emergency, COVID-19, in the context of English-speaking countries. The statistical analysis conducted involved descriptive and inferential analyses to address the research questions. In the second study, Twitter data were retrieved for three misinformation types based on keywords inspired by the first study. Twitter data were analysed via network analysis and topic modelling to obtain insights into the networks formed around this misinformation and to understand users’ reactions within these networks. Despite the study aiming to investigate responses to misinformation across users from English-speaking countries, almost all participants (95%) came from the USA. Hence, the results largely capture the reactions and behaviors of U.S social media users narrowing the scope of the findings for users from other English speaking countries.
Findings: People react to misinformation differently depending on whether they agree or disagree with it and the source of the information, with common actions including reporting, ignoring or engaging with the author. Individuals use a variety of verification strategies, including consulting experts and evaluating source credibility. The results highlight the critical roles of internal and external authentication in determining the trustworthiness of information by explaining comprehensive strategies and techniques used to authenticate information. Theoretical Conceptual model of people reactions to misinformation refines Bautista et al. (2021), enhancing misinformation response strategies. The results also highlight that ignoring misinformation is the most common response, but people are more likely to engage with misinformation with which they agree. People who prefer government or health organisation sources tend to block or report misinformation, while those who prefer mainstream news sources are more likely to engage in discussion. Easy to spot misinformation encourage greater user engagement in sharing or reporting misinformation compared to difficult to spot misinformation. . Additionally, based on false claims about the Pfizer vaccine, origins of the virus and vitamin D, misinformation on COVID-19 divides Twitter social networks into various groups of users. Retweets facilitate the dissemination of misinformation, constituting 85% of misinformation-related tweets. Influential actors propagate false narratives through their high-centrality roles within networks. Political polarization enables the proliferation of misinformation in ideologically biased environments. Fact-checking efforts are constrained by their limited reach and relative influence. Visual cues can help people identify misinformation. People often prefer to obtain COVID-19 information from social media, even though they encounter misinformation there and do not trust social media content. How individuals react and verify misinformation is influenced by key factors such as age, education and preferred information. This enhances our comprehension of how misinformation is disseminated in society and its consequences. It also shows patterns of sharing and ideological biases in misinformation dissemination. This can guide policies aimed at dismantling network structures and social media components that enable the spread of misinformation.
Implications: Combating misinformation requires a multifaceted approach that encompasses individual responsibility, responsible media practices, proactive education, respectful communication, and personal characteristics when identifying misinformation and reaction strategies. Diversifying information sources and fostering critical thinking skills empower individuals to assess credibility independently. Cultivating trust in credible sources is crucial to divert reliance from unverified content. Social media platforms must prioritise transparency, fact checking, and user education to halt the spread of misinformation, and we must target education and digital literacy initiatives to empower younger generations to distinguish between accurate and misinformation. Communication approaches must continuously adapt to address the evolving nature of misinformation and the dynamics of social media.
