Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2023

Abstract

On February 15, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director, General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated at a Munich Security Conference, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” (Zarocostas, 2020, p. 676). The term ‘infodemic’ refers to the onslaught of both accurate and inaccurate health information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of an ‘infodemic’ was quickly integrated into mass media, popular culture (i.e., documentaries, podcasts), and eventually scholarly literature. In response to COVID-19, health communication scholars have centered on understanding specific messaging strategies such as the use of fear appeals (Stolow et al., 2020), nature of advertising narratives (Deng et al., 2022), the impact of visual health communication messages such as comics (Kearns & Kearns, 2020), the inclusiveness and accessibility of COVID-related health information (e.g., readability ) (Basch et al., 2020; Goggin & Ellis, 2020), as well as other message features and content attributes. Scholarly efforts have also explored the impacts of the specific sources of COVID-19 messages (Carico et al., 2021; Ju et al., 2023) and popular distribution channels such as social and mass media (Lwin, 2020; Meppelink, 2022). The effects of these messages and sources about COVID-19 have been studied in relation to a variety of health-related attitudes (i.e., public trust, vaccine hesitation, vaccine confidence) (Chou, & Budenz, 2020; Paek & Hove, 2020; Thaker, 2021) and health related-behaviors (i.e., vaccine uptake) (MacPherson, 2020).

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