scholarly journals Social Media as Vehicle for Conspiracy Beliefs on COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-39
Author(s):  
Andreas Goreis ◽  
Oswald D. Kothgassner
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Preventive Health ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Highlights: Conspiracy beliefs are spread via social media platforms and may have a negative impact on preventive health measures Preventive measures against fear and misinformation need to consider the differential effects of different forms of conspiracy theories on behavior Fostering awareness in society about COVID-19 misinformation in social media is crucial.

scholarly journals The Line Between Politics and Conspiracy Theories: Tracking Disinformation using #StopTheGreatReset

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashli Au
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Ongoing Project

Have you heard? In today’s pandemic, the Trudeau administration has been using the widespread lockdowns to impose socialism in Canada. This conspiracy theory has been mobilized under the hash tags #StopTheGreatReset, #Scamdemic and #CancelTheLockdown amongst others. With the COVID-19 pandemic, as with previous major events, there has been an influx of dis-and mis- information on social media platforms. This rapid spread of information can have strong influences on people’s behaviour which can impact the effectiveness of public health measures taken by governments (Cinelli et al. 2020; González-Padilla andTortolero-Blanco 2020). My research is part of an ongoing project that aims to identify and map the spread of  disinformation, and its effects on Canadian society. For this sub-project, I created a database of social media posts from Twitter accounts that promote or spread disinformation narratives directed towards Canadian politics and public health measures. From this, we were able to identify some of the most common narratives of disinformation in circulation on Twitter; the hash tag #StopTheGreatReset was chosen as the focus of the project to study the fine, and often blurred, line between legitimate politics and conspiracy theories. Going forth, my aim is to conduct a qualitative analysis on the links attached to social media posts fueling disinformation to understand what kinds of information are being circulated and identify common themes. This project has been an opportunity for me to learn about how social media research is conducted and allows me to engage with urgent issues in contemporary media culture.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Scientific Facts Vs. Conspiracy Theories: 0 – 1: Science Fails to Convince Even Highly Educated Individuals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marios Constantinou ◽  
Anthony Kagialis ◽  
Maria Karekla
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Psychological Distress ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
Scientific Facts

Abstract Science may be failing to convince a significant number of people about COVID-19 scientific facts and needed public health measures. Individual and social factors are behind believing conspiracy theories. Adults (N = 1001) were asked to rate their beliefs in various conspiracy theories circulating in social media, rate their psychological distress relating to COVID-19, rate their trust in science to solve COVID-19 problems, and rate their willingness to adhere to measures regarding social distancing and quarantine. The findings showed conspiracy theories are widely believed even among highly educated individuals. Stronger conspiracy theory beliefs predicted science mistrust and unwillingness to adhere to public health measures. Psychological distress increased conspiracy beliefs. Recommendations, stemming from the findings, for reducing such beliefs and better serve public health are discussed.

scholarly journals The dangers of blind trust: Examining the interplay among social media news use, misinformation identification, and news trust on conspiracy beliefs

2021 ◽  
pp. 096366252199802
Author(s):  
Xizhu Xiao ◽  
Porismita Borah ◽  
Yan Su
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
News Consumption ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
Moderation Model ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Significant Moderator ◽  
News Use

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation has been circulating on social media and multiple conspiracy theories have since become quite popular. We conducted a U.S. national survey for three main purposes. First, we aim to examine the association between social media news consumption and conspiracy beliefs specific to COVID-19 and general conspiracy beliefs. Second, we investigate the influence of an important moderator, social media news trust, that has been overlooked in prior studies. Third, we further propose a moderated moderation model by including misinformation identification. Our findings show that social media news use was associated with higher conspiracy beliefs, and trust in social media news was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between social media news use and conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, our findings show that misinformation identification moderated the relationship between social media news use and trust. Implications are discussed.

scholarly journals Social media and the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-437
Author(s):  
Sarah Gambo ◽  
Woyopwa Shem
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Research Interest ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Outbreak ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
National Orientation ◽  
And Control

Background: Amidst the recent outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there seems to be an avalanche of conspiracy theories that abound on social media platforms, and this subject attracted a lot of research interest. This study aimed to examine the "social media and the spread Covid-19 conspiracy theories in Nigeria" in light of the above.  Methods: The study adopted a qualitative design in order to explore the subject matter thoroughly. Thirty-five participants were conveniently sampled, and interviews were conducted to retrieved data from the participants. Results: Findings of this study revealed that there is a prevalence of conspiracy theories that have saturated social media ever since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was also found that ignorance, religious fanaticism, lack of censorship, and insufficient counter information on social media platforms are some of the possible factors that aided the spread of Covid-19 conspiracy theories among Nigerian social media users. Conclusion: This study recommends, among other things, that there is a swift need to curtail the spread of conspiracy theories through consistent dissemination of counter-information by both individuals and agencies like the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and the Nigerian Centre for Disease and Control (NCDC).

A Survey and a Case-Study Regarding Social Media Security and Privacy on Greek Future IT Professionals

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venetis Kanakaris ◽  
Georgios Lampropoulos ◽  
Kerstin Siakas
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Security And Privacy ◽  
It Professionals ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Nowadays, social media and social networks are increasingly used in business as they have drastically changed the way the community works, communicates, collaborates, socialises, creates content and shares knowledge and ideas. However, in particular, IT professionals and practitioners need to be aware of online security and privacy issues and the potential negative impact that they may cause on different aspects of business, such as online breaches or information theft. The use of social media inevitably leads to disclosure of personal information, with the use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) and other similar techniques. Hence, the aim of this article is twofold, namely first to show results of a survey towards future Greek IT practitioners regarding awareness and viewpoints of social media users concerning security and privacy on social media. More specifically the study was based on responses and viewpoints of 178 Greek electrical engineering and IT students to an online questionnaire. Secondly, the aim is also to show how easily a potential malicious user can anonymously track and retrieve sensitive personal information in an automated and undetectable way from popular social media platforms by using publicly available information, resources, and tools. The results of the survey show that most of the respondents are aware of the privacy settings of the social media platforms they use. However, they consider that they should be more careful concerning personal data and whom they add as friends or followers and they do not feel comfortable with the fact that a stranger might be able to access their personal information through their publications on social media platforms.The case study indicates that it is possible for malicious users to acquire sensitive personal data (e.g. user's location via tweets and instas from smartphones). In addition, the ability to map activity could allow malicious users to track the activities of unsuspected users and predict their future locations.

scholarly journals Identification of Online Public Shaming Using Machine Learning Framework

2021 ◽  
pp. 539-543
Author(s):  
Sonali Gaikwad ◽  
Tejashri Borate ◽  
Nandpriya Ashtekar ◽  
Umadevi Lade
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform

Social Media Platforms involve not millions but billions of users around the globe. Interactions on these easily available social media sites like Twitter have a huge impact on people. Nowadays, there is undesirable negative impact for daily life. These hugely used major platforms of communication have now become a great source of dispersing unwanted data and irrelevant information, Twitter being one of the most extravagant social media platform in our times, the topmost popular microblogging services is now used as a weapon to share unethical, unreasonable amount of opinions, media. In this proposed work the dishonouring comments, tweets towards people are categorized into 9 types. The tweets are further classifies into one of these types or non-shaming tweets towards people. Observation says out of the multitude of taking an interested clients who posts remarks on a specific occasion, lions share are probably going to modify the person in question. Moreover, it is not the nonshaming devotee who checks the increment quicker but of shaming in twitter.

scholarly journals Towards Combating Pandemic-Related Misinformation in Social Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 140-158
Author(s):  
Isa Inuwa-Dutse
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Impact ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Conventional preventive measures during pandemics include social distancing and lockdown. Such measures in the time of social media brought about a new set of challenges – vulnerability to the toxic impact of online misinformation is high. A case in point is COVID-19. As the virus propagates, so does the associated misinformation and fake news about it leading to an infodemic. Since the outbreak, there has been a surge of studies investigating various aspects of the pandemic. Of interest to this chapter are studies centering on datasets from online social media platforms where the bulk of the public discourse happens. The main goal is to support the fight against negative infodemic by (1) contributing a diverse set of curated relevant datasets; (2) offering relevant areas to study using the datasets; and (3) demonstrating how relevant datasets, strategies, and state-of-the-art IT tools can be leveraged in managing the pandemic.

scholarly journals Conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intent for COVID-19 in an infodemic

PLoS ONE ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. e0261559
Author(s):  
Ali Ghaddar ◽  
Sanaa Khandaqji ◽  
Zeinab Awad ◽  
Rawad Kansoun
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Viral Spread ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Guidelines And Recommendations

Background The massive, free and unrestricted exchange of information on the social media during the Covid-19 pandemic has set fertile grounds for fear, uncertainty and the rise of fake news related to the virus. This “viral” spread of fake news created an “infodemic” that threatened the compliance with public health guidelines and recommendations. Objective This study aims to describe the trust in social media platforms and the exposure to fake news about COVID-19 in Lebanon and to explore their association with vaccination intent. Methods In this cross-sectional study conducted in Lebanon during July–August, 2020, a random sample of 1052 participants selected from a mobile-phone database responded to an anonymous structured questionnaire after obtaining informed consent (response rate = 40%). The questionnaire was conducted by telephone and measured socio-demographics, sources and trust in sources of information and exposure to fake news, social media activity, perceived threat and vaccination intent. Results Results indicated that the majority of participants (82%) believed that COVID-19 is a threat and 52% had intention to vaccinate. Exposure to fake/ unverified news was high (19.7% were often and 63.8% were sometimes exposed, mainly to fake news shared through Watsapp and Facebook). Trust in certain information sources (WHO, MoPH and TV) increased while trust in others (Watsapp, Facebook) reduced vaccination intent against Covid-19. Believing in the man-made theory and the business control theory significantly reduced the likelihood of vaccination intent (Beta = 0.43; p = 0.01 and Beta = -0.29; p = 0.05) respectively. Conclusion In the context of the infodemic, understanding the role of exposure to fake news and of conspiracy believes in shaping healthy behavior is important for increasing vaccination intent and planning adequate response to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals The weaponization of web archives: Data craft and COVID-19 publics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Acker ◽  
Mitch Chaiet
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social Media Analytics ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Provenance Information ◽  
Web Resources ◽  
Web Archives ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Factual Content ◽  
Human Actors

An unprecedented volume of harmful health misinformation linked to the coronavirus pandemic has led to the appearance of misinformation tactics that leverage web archives in order to evade content moderation on social media platforms. Here we present newly identified manipulation techniques designed to maximize the value, longevity, and spread of harmful and non-factual content across social media using provenance information from web archives and social media analytics. After identifying conspiracy content that has been archived by human actors with the Wayback Machine, we report on user patterns of “screensampling,” where images of archived misinformation are spread via social platforms. We argue that archived web resources from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and subsequent screenshots contribute to the COVID-19 “misinfodemic” in platforms. Understanding these manipulation tactics that use sources from web archives reveals something vexing about information practices during pandemics—the desire to access reliable information even after it has been moderated and fact-checked, for some individuals, will give health misinformation and conspiracy theories more traction because it has been labeled as specious content by platforms.

scholarly journals Health-protective behaviour, social media usage and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Allington ◽  
Bobby Duffy ◽  
Simon Wessely ◽  
Nayana Dhavan ◽  
James Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Broadcast Media ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Protective Behaviours

Abstract Background Social media platforms have long been recognised as major disseminators of health misinformation. Many previous studies have found a negative association between health-protective behaviours and belief in the specific form of misinformation popularly known as ‘conspiracy theory’. Concerns have arisen regarding the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on social media. Methods Three questionnaire surveys of social media use, conspiracy beliefs and health-protective behaviours with regard to COVID-19 among UK residents were carried out online, one using a self-selecting sample (N = 949) and two using stratified random samples from a recruited panel (N = 2250, N = 2254). Results All three studies found a negative relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and COVID-19 health-protective behaviours, and a positive relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and use of social media as a source of information about COVID-19. Studies 2 and 3 also found a negative relationship between COVID-19 health-protective behaviours and use of social media as a source of information, and Study 3 found a positive relationship between health-protective behaviours and use of broadcast media as a source of information. Conclusions When used as an information source, unregulated social media may present a health risk that is partly but not wholly reducible to their role as disseminators of health-related conspiracy beliefs.

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