While belief in misinformation about COVID-19 is not held by a majority of people in any particular country (although the Mexican and Spanish samples do rate the misinformation as most reliable compared to other countries), specific misinformation claims are consistently deemed reliable by a substantial segment of the public(the coronavirus was engineered in a laboratory in Wuhan)

Belief in Misinformation

There is a clear link between misinformation susceptibility and vaccine hesitancy  and a decreased likelihood of compliance with public health guidelines.

Effect of Misinformation Susceptibility on Behavior

In this study researchers explored susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation aand it's effect on self-reported behavior in five countries around the world: the UK, Ireland, Spain, the USA and Mexico.

New York University

One recent event that led to a surge of health misinformation was the COVID-19 Pandemic. Misinformation spreading had dangerous consequences, such as causing people to overreact (trying ineffective treatments, hoarding goods) or underreact (neglect public-safety measures, unintentionally spread the virus). 

Misinformation and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Roozenbeek J, Schneider CR, Dryhurst S, Kerr J, Freeman ALJ, Recchia G, van
der Bles AM, van der Linden S. 2020. Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19 around the world. R. Soc. Open Sci. 7: 201199. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201199

Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19 around the world

While it remains certain that consequences can arise from believing fake news, the extent to this remains unclear. Specifically, there is limited research on whether believing fake news can influence an individual's intentions to change their personal behavior. Researchers such as Greene & Murphy (2021) aim to breach this gap in scientific literature to determine if exposure to fake news related to the COVID-19 pandemic will impact participants' intentions to alter their behavior in light of the recent coronavirus outbreak. 

Effects of COVID-19 Related Fake News on Behavioral Intentions

Pennycook et al. tested the inattention-based account of misinformation sharing as it relates to COVID-19 misinformation. They conducted two studies. The goal of the first study was to find correlations between personal characteristics and the ability to discern true or false headlines under different conditions. The goal of the second study was to see if subtly reminding people to consider accuracy reduced misinformation sharing related to COVID-19. 

Inattention-based misinformation and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The goal of the study was to study/determine the factors that lead to the sharing of misinformation. Apuke & Omar analyzed data to determine the effects of six variables on the outcome of COVID-19 fake news sharing. The six variables are:
- altruism
- information sharing 
- entertainment
- socialisation
- information seeking
- pass time

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