Jung Soyoung, Jung Sooin
The School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.
Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States.
JMIR Form Res. 2022 Jan 31;6(1):e32552. doi: 10.2196/32552.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, information diffusion about the COVID-19 has attracted public attention through social media. The World Health Organization declared an infodemic of COVID-19 on February 15, 2020. Misinformation and disinformation, including overwhelming amounts of information about COVID-19 on social media, could promote adverse psychological effects.
This study used the Psychological Distance and Level of Construal theory (CLT) to predict peoples' negative psychological symptoms from social media usage. In this study, the CLT intended to show peoples' psychological proximity to objects and events with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this study links the uncertainty reduction strategy (URS) and CLT for COVID-19-related preventive behaviors and affective reactions to assess their effects on mental health problems.
A path model was tested (N=297) with data from a web-based survey to examine how social media usage behaviors are associated with URS and psychological distance with COVID-19 (based on the CLT), leading to preventive behaviors and affective reactions. Finally, the path model was used to examine how preventive behaviors and affective reactions are associated with mental health problems including anxiety and sleep disorder.
After measuring participants' social media usage behavior, we found that an increase in general social media usage led to higher use of the URS and lower construal level on COVID-19. The URS is associated with preventive behaviors, but the CLT did not show any association with preventive behaviors; however, it increases affective reactions. Moreover, increased preventive behavior showed negative associations with symptoms of mental health problems; that is, depression and sleep disorder. However, the affective reaction tends to be positively associated with depression and sleep disorder. Owing to the infodemic of COVID-19, the psychological perception of the pandemic negatively influenced users' mental health problems.
Our results imply that the information from social media usage heightened concerns and had a lower construal level; this does not facilitate taking preventive actions but rather reinforces the negative emotional reaction and mental health problems. Thus, higher URS usage is desirable.
在新冠疫情期间，关于新冠病毒的信息传播通过社交媒体引起了公众关注。2020年2月15日，世界卫生组织宣布新冠病毒存在信息疫情。错误信息和不实信息，包括社交媒体上大量关于新冠病毒的信息，可能会引发不良心理影响。
本研究运用心理距离和解释水平理论（CLT），从社交媒体使用情况预测人们的负面心理症状。在本研究中，CLT旨在展示人们在新冠疫情方面与对象和事件的心理亲近程度。此外，本研究将不确定性减少策略（URS）与CLT联系起来，以探讨与新冠病毒相关的预防行为和情感反应，评估它们对心理健康问题的影响。
采用基于网络调查的数据对一个路径模型（N = 297）进行测试，以检验社交媒体使用行为如何与URS以及与新冠病毒的心理距离（基于CLT）相关联，进而导致预防行为和情感反应。最后，使用该路径模型检验预防行为和情感反应如何与包括焦虑和睡眠障碍在内的心理健康问题相关联。
在测量参与者的社交媒体使用行为后，我们发现总体社交媒体使用的增加导致更多地使用URS，以及对新冠病毒的解释水平降低。URS与预防行为相关，但CLT与预防行为未显示出任何关联；然而，它会增加情感反应。此外，预防行为的增加与心理健康问题的症状呈负相关；即与抑郁和睡眠障碍呈负相关。然而，情感反应往往与抑郁和睡眠障碍呈正相关。由于新冠病毒的信息疫情，对疫情的心理认知对用户的心理健康问题产生了负面影响。
我们的结果表明，社交媒体使用所带来的信息加剧了担忧，且解释水平较低；这不利于采取预防行动，反而强化了负面情绪反应和心理健康问题。因此，更高程度地使用URS是可取的。
