Why New Media app during the Healthcare Crisis? WhatsApp Based Study

WhatsApp is one of the most popular mobile applications providing instant messaging and ease of access. It uses web-based systems to send and receive texts, calls, and videos and even offers video chat. However, during the current healthcare crisis, WhatsApp's role is comparatively more prominent and needs more consideration. In this context, we conducted this research to examine the factors motivating students to rely more on WhatsApp during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the Uses and Gratifications Approach, we adopted a cross-sectional design and gathered data from university students in Islamabad, Pakistan. Findings from n= 302 university-level students affirmed communication (p≥ .000), learning (p≥ .002), Teamwork (p≥ .041), and information sharing (p≥ .000) as the motivating factors behind increased WhatsApp usage (p≥ .011) during the healthcare crisis. Similarly, path analysis results also validated a strong correlation between the variables, further affirming the strength of the proposed conceptual framework. Thus, WhatsApp not only provided ease of communication during Covid-19 but also helped sustain educational activities. Here we recommend more studies to examine other different factors, especially personality factors that can affect one's WhatsApp usage

Impact of Social Media in the Fight Against Misinformation on Corona Virus Pandemic

This study examined the impact of social media within the fight against misinformation on coronavirus pandemic. The study therefore assessed the character of coronavirus pandemic information shared on social media sites by undergraduate students in central region of Ghana. Structured questionnaire copies were administered to 355 undergraduate students in University of Education, Winneba, University of Cape Coast, and Cape Coast Technical University. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Result showed that 71.3% of the scholars across the chosen universities were conscious of social media and made used of it. Facebook was the foremost favourite social media platform followed by Instagram and WhatsApp, while Kinschat, LinkedIn, Skype and BBM were least preferred social media sites. Independent samples test result showed there was no significant gender difference within the preference of social media sites (t = 1.039, p>0.05). The result showed that 81.4% of the scholars had encounter coronavirus pandemic information on social media, while only 24.8% had shared coronavirus pandemic information on social media. Prevention methods and general coronavirus pandemic knowledge were the most sorts of information shared. ANOVA result further revealed significant variation within the sort of coronavirus pandemic information shared on social media among the three universities (F = 5.177; p<0.05). The Post Hoc Test of multiple comparison indicated that the type of coronavirus pandemic information shared in Cape Coast Technical University differed significantly from those shared in University of Education, Winneba and University of Cape Coast respectively. Keywords: SOCIAL MEDIA, MISINFORMATION, CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/95-05 Publication date: February 28th 202

Battling the Coronavirus Infodemic Among Social Media Users in Africa

How can we induce social media users to be discerning when sharing information during a pandemic? An experiment on Facebook Messenger with users from Kenya and Nigeria tested interventions designed to decrease intentions to share COVID-19 misinformation without decreasing intentions to share factual posts. The initial stage of the study incorporated: (i) a factorial design with 40 intervention combinations; and (ii) a contextual adaptive design, increasing the probability of assignment to treatments that worked better for previous subjects with similar characteristics. The second stage evaluated the best-performing treatments and a targeted treatment assignment policy estimated from the data. We precisely estimate null effects from warning flags and related article suggestions, tactics used by social media platforms. However, tips to identify misinformation and nudges to consider information's accuracy reduced misinformation sharing by 4.2% and 4.9% respectively. Such low-cost scalable interventions may improve the quality of information circulating online.Comment: 54 pages including appendix, 10 figure

Infodemic and the Crisis of Distinguishing Disinformation from Accurate Information: Case Study on the Use of Facebook in Kosovo during COVID-19

Social media over the years has been shown to be an important source for information in times of crisis and confusion. Citizens who were restricted to their homes due to pandemic-mitigating lockdowns have desired more than ever to be informed about the pandemic, have been exposed to a host of misinformation, which has also affected their trust in the media, as well as the way they have been informed about COVID-19 in the days following. This research aims to analyze how citizens have used the media during COVID-19 and whether they were capable to accurately distinguish misinformation or disinformation from accurate information. To respond to the research question and to test hypotheses a survey based on purposive sampling method was used with citizens that included 850 respondents from the seven main regions of Kosovo. Results of this study indicate that the information-seeking habits have changed within a short period of time and Kosovo society can easily be affected by disinformation. The data demonstrated that citizens failed to distinguish between false and true news. The results also highlight that education and economic situation were significant indicators, with less educated people, and people with the weakest economic well-being are more likely to believe false information.Metams bėgant socialinės medijos buvo svarbus informacijos šaltinis krizės ir sąmyšio metu. Žmonės, kurie dėl pandemijos turėjo likti namie, susidūrė su daugybe dezinformacijos, kuri taip pat paveikė jų pasitikėjimą medijomis bei požiūrį į COVID-19. Šiuo tyrimu siekiama išanalizuoti, kaip žmonės naudojosi medijomis COVID-19 metu ir ar jie gali tiksliai atskirti dezinformaciją nuo tikslios informacijos. Siekiant patvirtinti hipotezes buvo atlikta tikslinės atrankos metodu pagrįsta žmonių apklausa, kurioje dalyvavo 850 respondentų iš septynių pagrindinių Kosovo regionų. Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidė, kad informacijos ieškojimo įpročiai per trumpą laiką pasikeitė ir Kosovo visuomenė gali būti lengvai paveikta dezinformacijos. Duomenys parodė, kad žmonės nesugebėjo atskirti melagingų nuo tikrų naujienų. Rezultatai taip pat parodė, kad švietimas ir ekonominė padėtis buvo reikšmingi rodikliai žemesnio išsilavinimo žmonėms, o prasčiausią ekonominę gerovę turintys žmonės labiau tiki klaidinga informacija

“Keep Calm, it's just Vapour”: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Online E-Cigarette Discourse and User Perspectives in Western Australia

The aim of this research was to understand how electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are promoted, accessed, and used within a tightly regulated environment, by exploring the Australian online e-cigarette discourse, and the perspectives of e-cigarette users residing within the Greater Capital City Statistical Area of Perth, Western Australia. To achieve this aim three substudies were undertaken: a) scoping review, b) Twitter inquiry and c) qualitative inquiry

Enable people to identify science news based on retracted articles on social media

For many people, social media is an important way to consume news on important topics like health. Unfortunately, some influential health news is misinformation because it is based on retracted scientific work. Ours is the first work to explore how people can understand this form of misinformation and how an augmented social media interface can enable them to make use of information about retraction. We report a between subjects think-aloud study with 44 participants, where the experimental group used our augmented interface. Our results indicate that this helped them consider retraction when judging the credibility of news. Our key contributions are foundational insights for tackling the problem, revealing the interplay between people's understanding of scientific retraction, their prior beliefs about a topic, and the way they use a social media interface that provides access to retraction information

Towards a general model of (mis-)information belief and sharing

The present research proposes and tests a causal model of how people believe and share misinformative news, as opposed to informative news. In a within-subjects experiment, we presented ten news publications with political content, extracted from Facebook, to 259 Portuguese participants. We tested the impact of individuals' prior political beliefs in judging the veracity and probability of sharing informative and misinformative news publications, via perceived emotion (surprise and interest) and credibility (trustworthiness, rigorosity, impartiality). The results showed that participants' ability to distinguish truth from lies was quite limited. Misinformative and informative news were processed in a similar way. Emotional and credibility cues did not only depend on objective news content, but also on prior beliefs. Negative beliefs about the political system increased emotionality in the processing of true and false news. Moreover, greater emotionality increased perceptions of credibility, which in turn increased perceived veracity and probability of sharing news (true or false). The most distinct difference between the two types of news was that participants with more negative beliefs about the political system were more willing to share objectively misinformative news, and more surprised by news (informative or misinformative) they considered to be false, with surprise increasing the probability of sharing such news despite their perceived falsehood. We conclude that people seem to rely on emotional cues, appraised with regard to prior beliefs, and on emotionally biased credibility indicators to guess whether news are true or - independent on veracity - worth sharing.No presente estudo propomos e testamos um modelo causal de como as pessoas acreditam e partilham notícias desinformativas e informativas. Numa experiência intra sujeitos, apresentámos dez publicações do Facebook, de notícias com conteúdo político, a 259 participantes portugueses. Testámos o impacto das crenças políticas prévias dos indivíduos no julgamento de veracidade e probabilidade de partilhar publicações de notícias desinformativas e informativas, através da emoção percebida (surpresa e interesse) e da credibilidade (confiabilidade, rigor, imparcialidade). Os resultados demostraram que a capacidade dos participantes de distinguir a verdade da mentira é bastante limitada. Notícias desinformativas e informativas foram processadas de forma semelhante. As pistas emocionais e de credibilidade não dependem apenas do conteúdo objetivo das notícias, mas também de crenças anteriores. As crenças negativas sobre o sistema político aumentaram a emocionalidade no processamento de notícias verdadeiras e falsas. Enquanto uma maior emocionalidade aumentou as perceções de credibilidade, levando ao aumento da veracidade percebida e da probabilidade de partilhar notícias (verdadeiras ou falsas). A diferença mais distinta entre os dois tipos de notícias era que participantes com crenças mais negativas sobre o sistema político estavam mais dispostos a partilhar notícias objetivamente desinformativas e mais surpresos com as notícias (informativas ou desinformativas) que consideravam falsas; com o aumento da surpresa a aumentar a probabilidade de partilha, apesar da sua falsidade percebida. Concluímos que as pessoas confiam em pistas emocionais, avaliadas em relação a crenças anteriores, e em indicadores de credibilidade com enviesamentos emocionais, para adivinhar se as notícias são verdadeiras ou - independentemente da veracidade - partilháveis