ArticleInformation processing & management2021
Characterizing the dissemination of misinformation on social media in health emergencies: An empirical study based on COVID-19.
Article in Information processing & management, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Disinformation: A Bibliometric Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Platform compliance governance in digital public health communication: effects of emergency health knowledge dissemination on protective behaviors.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Evaluating community resilience through social media during China's first post-COVID-19 reopening: insights from machine learning.Journal of global health · 2025Article
- Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies Against Health Misinformation: A Scoping Review of Public Health Responses.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Trust in doctors, social support, and belief in COVID-19 misinformation.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Media portrayals and social stigma surrounding COVID-19 survivors: a content analysis of Chinese media coverage.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Should manufacturers choose technological innovation in dual-channel supply chains during emergencies?PloS one · 2025Article
- Neural mechanisms of cognitive conflict: processing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Identifying determinants for promoting public engagement via Chinese E-government TikTok in public health emergencies.PloS one · 2025Article
- The use of social media as an influence on vaccination rates: A systematic review protocol.PloS one · 2025Article
- Subject Modeling-Based Analysis of the Evolution and Intervention Strategies of Major Emerging Infectious Disease Events.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2025Article
- Exploring online health information quality criteria on social media: a mixed method approach.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Article
- News Waves: Hard News, Soft News, Fake News, Rumors, News Wavetrains.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Dynamics and characteristics of misinformation related to earthquake predictions on Twitter.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Assessing How Risk Communication Surveillance Prompts COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance Among Internet Users by Applying the Situational Theory of Problem Solving: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- From pandemic to Plandemic: Examining the amplification and attenuation of COVID-19 misinformation on social media.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- Exploring the impact of sentiment on multi-dimensional information dissemination using COVID-19 data in China.Computers in human behavior · 2023Article
- Impact of social media news on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and vaccination behavior.Telematics and informatics · 2023Article
- Extended Multicriteria Group Decision Making with a Novel Aggregation Operator for Emergency Material Supplier Selection.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The dissemination of misinformation in health emergencies poses serious threats to public health and increases health anxiety. To understand the underlying mechanism of the dissemination of misinformation regarding health emergencies, this study creatively draws on social support theory and text mining. It also explores the roles of different types of misinformation, including health advice and caution misinformation and health help-seeking misinformation, and emotional support in affecting individuals' misinformation dissemination behavior on social media and whether such relationships are contingent on misinformation ambiguity and richness. The theoretical model is tested using 12,101 textual data about COVID-19 collected from Sina Weibo, a leading social media platform in China. The empirical results show that health caution and advice, help seeking misinformation, and emotional support significantly increase the dissemination of misinformation. Furthermore, when the level of ambiguity and richness regarding misinformation is high, the effect of health caution and advice misinformation is strengthened, whereas the effect of health help-seeking misinformation and emotional support is weakened, indicating both dark and bright misinformation ambiguity and richness. This study contributes to the literature on misinformation dissemination behavior on social media during health emergencies and social support theory and provides implications for practice.
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Registered trials
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.