School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
Front Public Health. 2021 Aug 30;9:723648. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.723648. eCollection 2021.
Every outbreak of an epidemic or pandemic disease is accompanied by the tsunami of information, which is also known as the infodemic. Infodemic makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it, and causes social panic about health, widens the gaps between races and regions, and even brings the social chaos all over the world. While most researchers and related parties made efforts to control the inaccurate information spreading online during the COVID-19 pandemic, the infodemic influence caused by the overload of accurate information were almost or completely ignored, and this will hinder the control of infodemic in future public health crises. This study aims to explore the infodemic vs. pandemic influence on people's psychological anxiety across different media sources in the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. A cross-sectional study using online survey method was conducted by a data-collection service provider in April 2020. A total of 1,117 valid samples were finally collected from 5,203 randomly invited members webpages and WeChat. The sample distribution covered the 30 provincial administrative divisions of mainland China. Hierarchical regression analysis for the potential pandemic sources and infodemic sources of psychological anxiety showed that the infodemic factors of attention to the coronavirus information (β = 0.154, < 0.001) and commercial media exposure (β = 0.147, < 0.001) is positively related to the level of anxiety. Statistics indicated that influence of the infodemic factors is over and above that of the pandemic factors (Δ = 0.054, = 14.199, and < 0.001). Mediation analysis showed that information overload ( = 0.155, Boot SE = 0.022, and 95% Boot CI [0.112, 0.198]) mediates the link between attention to coronavirus information and anxiety; both information overload ( = 0.035, Boot SE = 0.014, and 95% Boot CI [0.009, 0.062]) and media vicarious traumatization (B = 0.106, Boot SE = 0.017, and 95% Boot CI [0.072, 0.140]) mediate the link between commercial media exposure and anxiety. This study suggested that the influence of infodemic with mixed accurate and inaccurate information on public anxiety does exist, which could possibly go beyond that of the pandemic. Information overload and vicarious traumatization explain how infodemic may be associated to public anxiety. Finally, commercial media could be a major source of infodemic in the Chinese media context. Implications for the related parties were discussed.
每次传染病或大流行病爆发时，都会伴随着信息海啸，这也被称为信息疫情。信息疫情使得人们在需要时难以找到可靠的信息来源和可靠的指导，导致对健康的社会恐慌，扩大了种族和地区之间的差距，甚至给全世界带来社会混乱。虽然大多数研究人员和相关方面都在努力控制 COVID-19 大流行期间网上传播的不准确信息，但对于因大量准确信息而产生的信息疫情影响几乎完全被忽视，这将阻碍未来公共卫生危机中对信息疫情的控制。本研究旨在探讨在 COVID-19 在中国爆发的早期，不同媒体来源的信息疫情与大流行对人们心理焦虑的影响。 本研究采用在线调查方法，通过数据收集服务提供商于 2020 年 4 月进行了一项横断面研究。最终从随机邀请的 5203 名成员的网页和微信中收集到 1117 份有效样本。样本分布涵盖了中国大陆的 30 个省级行政区。 对心理焦虑的潜在大流行来源和信息疫情来源的分层回归分析表明，对冠状病毒信息的关注（β=0.154， < 0.001）和商业媒体暴露（β=0.147， < 0.001）的信息疫情因素与焦虑水平呈正相关。统计数据表明，信息疫情因素的影响大于大流行因素（Δ=0.054， = 14.199， < 0.001）。中介分析表明，信息过载（ = 0.155，Boot SE = 0.022，95%Boot CI [0.112，0.198]）介导了对冠状病毒信息的关注与焦虑之间的联系；信息过载（ = 0.035，Boot SE = 0.014，95%Boot CI [0.009，0.062]）和媒体替代性创伤（B = 0.106，Boot SE = 0.017，95%Boot CI [0.072，0.140]）均介导了商业媒体暴露与焦虑之间的联系。 本研究表明，混合准确和不准确信息的信息疫情对公众焦虑的影响确实存在，其影响可能超过大流行的影响。信息过载和替代性创伤解释了信息疫情如何与公众焦虑相关。最后，商业媒体可能是中国媒体环境中信息疫情的主要来源。讨论了对相关方的影响。
