Influence of Misinformation in Times of COVID‐19

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Table of Contents

Personal Perception
The Summary
The Individual Reflections
References

Personal Perception

Continued Influence of Misinformation in Times of COVID‐19 seemed important to me since misinformation has become one of the most powerful ways to influence the population’s consciousness, especially during such crises as a pandemic. The study proves that negative misinformation continues to impact even after it has been debunked. It is important to learn how to deal with misinformation by improving critical thinking skills. The authors again prove that misinformation is dangerous, especially in healthcare matters.

The Summary

The article explores the impact of correcting positive and negative misinformation about COVID‐19 on people. The first hypothesis was that the correction of misinformation affects the subsequent negative or positive perception of this information; that is, the effect of misinformation persists. The second hypothesis is that negative misinformation continues to affect the person while correcting positive misinformation removes its effects. The third hypothesis of the study states that people prone to overconfidence tend to be subject to a stronger misinformation effect. The study was conducted by interviewing four groups of people, each consisting of one hundred people. Two groups were given an article about a fictitious German hospital with the best record of fighting COVID‐19 in Western Europe. The two remaining groups were given articles naming the same fictional hospital as the hospital with the highest rates of deaths. Subsequently, two groups with negative and positive misinformation received a refutation, while the other two did not. After that, the participants received a survey that assessed their perception of the fictitious hospital.

The study proved the theory that negative misinformation continues to impact the recipient even after it has been debunked. The hypothesis that positive misinformation has less impact after rebuttal has not been confirmed. The effect of correcting positive misinformation was the opposite: respondents rated the fictitious hospital worse than before they learned about it at all. The third hypothesis was not confirmed as well: the level of self-confidence does not affect the perception of misinformation. However, the purity of the study, in this case, could be compromised since about a third of people with higher education participated in the survey, and, accordingly, the level of overconfidence was quite low (Van Huijstee et al., 2022). Theoretically, the study refers to previous works that explored the impact of disinformation. These studies have mostly discussed the impact of political misinformation.

The novelty of the study lies in the fact that, for the first time, it examines the level of influence of denials on the perception of information about COVID‐19. Krause’s article on the importance of fact-checking during a crisis may be used to explore the topic further. According to the authors, disinformation can be considered one of the most important and independent risks, to which the results of decades of research in the field of risk communication should be applied (Krause et al., 2020). Indeed, in recent years, with the development of social networks, misinformation has become an extremely serious weapon that can change people’s morale and seriously affect the degree of awareness of choice.

The Individual Reflections

In my opinion, the article has an effective evidence base: the statistics are presented to make the thesis convincing. In addition, the article is relevant: the study of the impact of disinformation is important in the context of the functioning of society after a crisis. For me, this article raised the awareness that it is necessary to develop critical thinking skills to remain able to resist misinformation. I discovered an interesting topic for further research: the mental characteristics of the perception of negative information.

References

Krause, N. M., Freiling, I., Beets, B., & Brossard, D. (2020). Fact-checking as risk communication: the multi-layered risk of misinformation in times of COVID-19. Journal of Risk Research, 23(7-8), 1052-1059.

Van Huijstee, D., Vermeulen, I., Kerkhof, P., & Droog, E. (2022). The continued influence of misinformation in times of COVID‐19. International Journal of Psychology, 57(1), 136-145.

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Influence of Misinformation in Times of COVID‐19

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