Zhang Di, Fang Bing, Yang Ling, Cai Yuyang
Department of Geriatrics, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
Department of Information Management, School of Management, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China.
Tob Induc Dis. 2021 Oct 22;19:83. doi: 10.18332/tid/142776. eCollection 2021.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, various types of disinformation have emerged from the media. This study focuses on the online disinformation about tobacco and the COVID-19 on the Sina Weibo, the Chinese largest new media microblog platform.
The related posts from the beginning of the epidemic in December 2019 to 19 January 2021 were searched. Text mining technology was applied on these posts to identify content on 'smoking can prevent COVID-19'. Descriptive research was used to analyze the dataset.
Among the 912 original posts, 508 informative posts were selected after artificial recognition, including 112 posts of spreading disinformation and 396 which dispel the disinformation. Of the disinformation posts, 74% (83/112) cited the results of scientific research, and 17% (19/112) mentioned that smog from burning Asian wormwood could prevent COVID-19. By analyzing the public's comments on these 112 disinformation posts, it was suggested that about 12% of the comments were in support, and 88% of the posts were opposed or invalid. The proportion of supportive comments on pseudo-scientific information was higher than on plain disinformation, 21% and 9%, respectively.
The disinformation of promoting smoking as a way to prevent COVID-19 has the typical feature of using pseudo-scientific arguments to package disinformation, making it very difficult for readers without professional knowledge to identify. Such actions harm both tobacco control and COVID-19 prevention.
在新冠疫情期间，媒体出现了各类虚假信息。本研究聚焦于中国最大的新媒体微博平台——新浪微博上有关烟草与新冠疫情的网络虚假信息。
搜索了从2019年12月疫情开始至2021年1月19日的相关帖子，并运用文本挖掘技术在这些帖子中识别有关“吸烟可预防新冠”的内容，采用描述性研究分析数据集。
在912条原始帖子中，经人工识别后筛选出508条信息性帖子，其中包括112条传播虚假信息的帖子和396条辟谣帖子。在虚假信息帖子中，74%（83/112）引用了科研结果，17%（19/112）提到燃烧艾草产生的烟雾可预防新冠。通过分析公众对这112条虚假信息帖子的评论发现，约12%的评论表示支持，88%的帖子遭到反对或无效。伪科学信息的支持性评论比例高于单纯的虚假信息，分别为21%和9%。
将吸烟宣传为预防新冠的方式这一虚假信息具有典型特征，即利用伪科学论据包装虚假信息，使缺乏专业知识的读者极难辨别。此类行为对烟草控制和新冠疫情防控均造成损害。
