Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34948596›Full record

ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2021

Explaining News Trust in Social Media News during the COVID-19 Pandemic-The Role of a Need for Cognition and News Engagement.

Ines Kožuh, Peter Čakš

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Communicating Risk in the Age of Misinformation: Empirical Frameworks for Understanding Stakeholder Trust.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026
    Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Ines KožuhFaculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia.ORCID 0000-0001-7875-5583
Peter ČakšFaculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, people have, in many cases, acquired information primarily from social media. Users' need to stay informed and the intensive circulation of news has led to the spread of misinformation. As they have engaged in news, it has raised the question of trust. This study provides a model on how news trust can be explained through a need for cognition and news engagement. Accordingly, 433 Slovenian social media users participated in our survey. Structural equation modeling revealed that (1) the lower the need for cognition and the more prior knowledge about COVID-19 users have, the more they believe that social media news comprises all facts about the disease; (2) the more users believe that news comprises all essential facts, the more they trust that the news depicts the actual situation about COVID-19 accurately; (3) the more users are interested in engaging with social media news, the more they trust that the actual situation about COVID-19 is depicted accurately. These findings may help authorities to frame messages about COVID-19 effectively. We suggest investing more effort in disseminating new scientific evidence about the disease to contribute to the accurate shaping of knowledge about COVID-19 among social media users.

Indexed as

COVID-19Social MediaCognitionHumansPandemicsSARS-CoV-2TrustCOVID-19need for cognitionnews engagementnews trustsocial media

Identifiers

PMID34948596
PMCPMC8701362

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

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.