ArticleJMIR public health and surveillance2021
Characterizing the COVID-19 Infodemic on Chinese Social Media: Exploratory Study.
Article in JMIR public health and surveillance, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Prevalence, Features, Influencing Factors, and Solutions for COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation: Systematic Review.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Pooled it
- The Impact of Misinformation on Social Media in the Context of Natural Disasters: Narrative Review.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Review
- Consumer ethnocentrism and political identity in value formation within public health communication for healthcare products: evidence from China.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Chinese Public Attitudes and Opinions on Health Policies During Public Health Emergencies: Sentiment and Topic Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Assessing Electronic Health Literacy in Individuals With the Post-COVID-19 Condition Using the German Revised eHealth Literacy Scale: Validation Study.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Where should "Humans" be in "One Health"? Lessons from COVID-19 for One Health.Globalization and health · 2024Article
- Complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine-specific COVID-19 misinformation on social media: A scoping review.Integrative medicine research · 2023Article
- Methods for Analyzing the Contents of Social Media for Health Care: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Information on the WeChat Public Platform: Topic Modeling and Content Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- COVID-19 Vaccines on TikTok: A Big-Data Analysis of Entangled Discourses.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- [Conspiracy theories and COVID-19: How do conspiracy beliefs arise?]L'Encephale · 2022Article
- Spatial-Temporal Pattern Evolution of Public Sentiment Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Small Cities of China: A Case Study Based on Social Media Data Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Explaining education-based difference in systematic processing of COVID-19 information: Insights into global recovery from infodemic.Information processing & management · 2022Article
- Spatiotemporal disparities in regional public risk perception of COVID-19 using Bayesian Spatiotemporally Varying Coefficients (STVC) series models across Chinese cities.International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR · 2022Article
- Article
- Psychophysiological Reactions of Internet Users Exposed to Fluoride Information and Disinformation: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR research protocols · 2022Article
- How Official Social Media Affected the Infodemic among Adults during the First Wave of COVID-19 in China.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- "I enjoy thinking critically, and I'm in control": Examining the influences of media literacy factors on misperceptions amidst the COVID-19 infodemic.Computers in human behavior · 2022Article
- Perspectives on Mass Media and Governmental Measures during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic in a Romanian Sample of Healthcare Practitioners.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Study on the communication effect of the social livestream of cabin hospitals' construction process during the COVID-19 outbreak.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe COVID-19 infodemic has been disseminating rapidly on social media and posing a significant threat to people's health and governance systems.
objectiveThis study aimed to investigate and analyze posts related to COVID-19 misinformation on major Chinese social media platforms in order to characterize the COVID-19 infodemic.
methodsWe collected posts related to COVID-19 misinformation published on major Chinese social media platforms from January 20 to May 28, 2020, by using PythonToolkit. We used content analysis to identify the quantity and source of prevalent posts and topic modeling to cluster themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic. Furthermore, we explored the quantity, sources, and theme characteristics of the COVID-19 infodemic over time.
resultsThe daily number of social media posts related to the COVID-19 infodemic was positively correlated with the daily number of newly confirmed (r=0.672, P<.01) and newly suspected (r=0.497, P<.01) COVID-19 cases. The COVID-19 infodemic showed a characteristic of gradual progress, which can be divided into 5 stages: incubation, outbreak, stalemate, control, and recovery. The sources of the COVID-19 infodemic can be divided into 5 types: chat platforms (1100/2745, 40.07%), video-sharing platforms (642/2745, 23.39%), news-sharing platforms (607/2745, 22.11%), health care platforms (239/2745, 8.71%), and Q&A platforms (157/2745, 5.72%), which slightly differed at each stage. The themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic were clustered into 8 categories: "conspiracy theories" (648/2745, 23.61%), "government response" (544/2745, 19.82%), "prevention action" (411/2745, 14.97%), "new cases" (365/2745, 13.30%), "transmission routes" (244/2745, 8.89%), "origin and nomenclature" (228/2745, 8.30%), "vaccines and medicines" (154/2745, 5.61%), and "symptoms and detection" (151/2745, 5.50%), which were prominently diverse at different stages. Additionally, the COVID-19 infodemic showed the characteristic of repeated fluctuations.
conclusionsOur study found that the COVID-19 infodemic on Chinese social media was characterized by gradual progress, videoization, and repeated fluctuations. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the COVID-19 infodemic is paralleled to the propagation of the COVID-19 epidemic. We have tracked the COVID-19 infodemic across Chinese social media, providing critical new insights into the characteristics of the infodemic and pointing out opportunities for preventing and controlling the COVID-19 infodemic.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.