Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Dec 9;18(24):12986. doi: 10.3390/ijerph182412986.
During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, people have, in many cases, acquired information primarily from social media. Users' need to stay informed and the intensive circulation of news has led to the spread of misinformation. As they have engaged in news, it has raised the question of trust. This study provides a model on how news trust can be explained through a need for cognition and news engagement. Accordingly, 433 Slovenian social media users participated in our survey. Structural equation modeling revealed that (1) the lower the need for cognition and the more prior knowledge about COVID-19 users have, the more they believe that social media news comprises all facts about the disease; (2) the more users believe that news comprises all essential facts, the more they trust that the news depicts the actual situation about COVID-19 accurately; (3) the more users are interested in engaging with social media news, the more they trust that the actual situation about COVID-19 is depicted accurately. These findings may help authorities to frame messages about COVID-19 effectively. We suggest investing more effort in disseminating new scientific evidence about the disease to contribute to the accurate shaping of knowledge about COVID-19 among social media users.
在最近的 COVID-19 大流行期间，人们在很多情况下主要从社交媒体获取信息。用户对信息的需求以及新闻的密集传播导致了错误信息的传播。随着他们对新闻的参与，也引发了信任问题。本研究通过认知需求和新闻参与度，提供了一个解释新闻信任的模型。因此，433 名斯洛文尼亚社交媒体用户参与了我们的调查。结构方程模型显示：(1) 认知需求越低，对 COVID-19 的了解越多，用户就越相信社交媒体新闻包含有关该疾病的所有事实；(2) 用户越相信新闻包含所有重要事实，他们就越相信新闻准确地描绘了 COVID-19 的实际情况；(3) 用户对参与社交媒体新闻的兴趣越大，他们就越相信 COVID-19 的实际情况被准确地描绘出来。这些发现可能有助于当局有效地制定有关 COVID-19 的信息。我们建议投入更多努力传播有关该疾病的新科学证据，为社交媒体用户对 COVID-19 的准确认知做出贡献。
