Explaining Health Misinformation Belief through News, Social, and Alternative Health Media Use: The Moderating Roles of Need for Cognition and Faith in Intuition.

Explaining the spread and impact of health misinformation has garnered considerable attention with the uptake of social media and group messaging applications. This study contributes to that line of work by investigating how reliance on multiple digital media may help support or suppress misinformation belief, and how individual differences in misinformation susceptibility condition this process. Alternative health outlets (AH media), advocating home/homeopathic remedies over conventional medicine can be important sources of misinformation, yet are largely ignored previously. In this study, we first test how reliance on different platforms predicts health misinformation belief. Drawing from the elaboration likelihood model, we further investigate how need for cognition (NFC) and faith in intuition (FI) moderate the relationship between news reliance and susceptibility to misinformation. We conducted a survey in Singapore, Turkey, and the U.S (N = 3,664) to measure how these proposed relationships explain misinformed beliefs about vaccines, genetically modified foods and alternative medicine. We found reliance on online legacy news was negatively associated with the likelihood of believing health misinformation, while the reverse was true for social media and AH media. Additionally, those with both greater NFC and FI were more susceptible to health misinformation when they relied on social media and AH media more. In contrast, neither NFC nor FI moderated the relationship between reliance on online legacy news and health misinformation belief. These findings, mostly consistent across countries, also show that extensive reliance on social media and AH media for news mostly overwhelms the individual differences in predicting misinformation belief.

Fostering mask-wearing with virality metrics and social media literacy: evidence from the U.S. and Korea.

Although social media can pose threats to the public health by spreading misinformation and causing confusion, they can also provide wider access to health information and opportunities for health surveillance. The current study investigates the ways in which preventive health behaviors and norms can be promoted on social media by analyzing data from surveys and experiments conducted in the U.S. and South Korea. Survey results suggest that the pathway from social media use for COVID-19 information to mask-wearing behavior through mask-wearing norms emerges only among individuals with strong perceived social media literacy in the U.S. Experimental findings show that wear-a-mask campaign posts on social media foster mask-wearing norms and behavioral intention when they come with large (vs. small) virality metrics (e.g., Likes, shares) in both the U.S. and South Korea. Additionally, American users are more willing to engage with posts that come with supportive (vs. mixed) comments by Liking, sharing and commenting. The results highlight the need to cultivate social media literacy and opportunities for exploiting social media virality metrics for promoting public health norms and behaviors.

Partisan Bias in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: News Reliance and the Moderating Role of Trust in Health Authorities.

Neglecting the role of political bias in the public's perceptions of health authorities could be deceptive when studying potentially politicized COVID-19 conspiracy theories (CCTs); however, previous studies often treated health authorities as a single entity and did not distinguish between different types of CCTs. Drawing from motivated reasoning theory, we investigate the politically motivated nature of CCTs by examining their associations with individuals' media reliance, party identification, conspiratorial mentality, and importantly, trust in (politicized or independent) health authorities. In a national survey conducted in late 2020 (N = 2,239) in Turkey, a heavily polarized context, we found that not accounting for political identities shown in CCTs and health authorities could be misleading. While those with a strong conspiracy mentality were more likely to endorse all types of CCTs, party identification and trust in different types of health authorities led people to believe in certain CCTs aligning with their political attitudes. The influence of media reliance on CCTs depended on the level of trust in health authorities, again suggestive of the influence of political partialities.

COVID-19 News Exposure and Vaccinations: A Moderated Mediation of Digital News Literacy Behavior and Vaccine Misperceptions.

Being exposed to and believing in misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines is a challenge for vaccine acceptance. Yet, how countervailing factors such as news literacy could complicate "the information exposure-belief in vaccine misinformation-vaccination" path needs to be unpacked to understand the communication of scientific information about COVID-19. This study examines (1) the mediating role of belief in vaccine misinformation between COVID-19 information exposure and vaccination behavior and (2) the moderating role of news literacy behaviors. We examine these relationships by collecting data in two distinct societies: the United States and South Korea. We conducted online surveys in June and September 2021 respectively for each country (N = 1336 [the U.S.]; N = 550 [South Korea]). Our results showed a significant moderated mediation model, in which the association between digital media reliance and COVID-19 vaccination was mediated through vaccine misperceptions, and the relationship between digital media reliance and misinformed belief was further moderated by news literacy behavior. Unexpectedly, we found that individuals with stronger news literacy behavior were more susceptible to misinformation belief. This study contributes to the extant literature on the communication of COVID-19 science through probing into the mediating role of belief in vaccine-related misinformation and the moderating role of news literacy behavior in relation to COVID-19 information exposure and vaccination behaviors. It also reflects the concept of news literacy behavior and discusses how it could be further refined to exert its positive impact in correcting misinformation beliefs.

Biased perceptions against female scientists affect intentions to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

Based on role congruity theory, we investigated how gender bias may influence public attitudes toward the vaccine in Turkey. Using a between-subjects design, we tested whether an emphasis on the female versus the male scientist as the vaccine's inventor in a news story influenced attitudes about the BioNTech vaccine and vaccination intentions. Partly confirming role congruity theory, three-way interaction results from 665 participants demonstrated that among male participants with a stronger belief in traditional gender roles (compared to males with lower belief), the presence of the female inventor, either by herself or together with the male inventor, decreased the perceived efficacy and safety of the vaccine and reduced intentions to be vaccinated by the BioNTech vaccine. We did not observe such differences for women. These findings highlight how gender bias may influence individuals' information processing and decision making in a way that may have negative consequences for public health.

Policy Views and Negative Beliefs About Vaccines in the United States, 2019.

Objectives. To determine whether holding vaccine misconceptions, in the form of negative beliefs about vaccines, correlates with opposing governmental action at all levels designed to increase vaccination (e.g., removing personal belief and religious vaccine exemptions).Methods. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey of 1938 US adults, we assessed the relation between negative beliefs about vaccines and provaccination policies.Results. Beyond sociodemographic and policy-relevant variables, such as gender and partisan affiliation, questionable negative beliefs about vaccines are the strongest predictor of opposition to policies designed to increase vaccination.Conclusions. Negative beliefs about vaccines in the general population may thwart the passage or implementation of policies designed to increase vaccination. Implementing strategies that reduce these negative beliefs should be a priority of educators and public health officials.