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This paper aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 infodemic on the public’s online information behaviour, offering insights critical for shaping effective informational responses in future public health emergencies.

This paper uses a structured online survey with 27 targeted questions using a five-point Likert scale to measure eight variables. Data analysis is conducted through structural equation modelling on 307 valid responses to rigorously test the research hypotheses.

This paper indicates that information quality significantly impacts the public’s capacity to select, share and use online information. Additionally, the comprehensibility of information plays a crucial role in shaping the public’s behaviours in terms of online information exchange and usage. The credibility of information sources emerges as a key determinant influencing the public’s online information selection, exchange and utilization behaviour. Moreover, social influence exerts a substantial effect on the public’s online information selection, acquisition, exchange and utilization behaviour. These findings highlight the presence of universality and sociality, mediation and guidance, as well as the purposefulness and selectivity performed by the public’s online information behaviour during an infodemic.

This paper introduces a novel research model for assessing the influence and identifies the patterns of the public’s online information behaviour during the COVID-19 infodemic. The findings have significant implications for developing strategies to tackle information dissemination challenges in future major public health emergencies.

This study empirically investigates how the COVID-infodemic manifests differently in different languages and in different countries. This paper focuses on the topical and temporal features of misinformation related to COVID-19 in five countries.

COVID-related misinformation was retrieved from 4,487 fact-checked articles. A novel approach to conducting cross-lingual topic extraction was applied. The rectr algorithm, empowered by aligned word-embedding, was utilised. To examine how the COVID-infodemic interplays with the pandemic, a time series analysis was used to construct and compare their temporal development.

The cross-lingual topic model findings reveal the topical characteristics of each country. On an aggregated level, health misinformation represents only a small portion of the COVID-infodemic. The time series results indicate that, for most countries, the infodemic curve fluctuates with the epidemic curve. In this study, this form of infodemic is referred to as “point-source infodemic”. The second type of infodemic is continuous infodemic, which is seen in India and the United States (US). In those two countries, the infodemic is predominantly caused by political misinformation; its temporal distribution appears to be largely unrelated to the epidemic development.

Despite the growing attention given to misinformation research, existing scholarship is dominated by single-country or mono-lingual research. This study takes a cross-national and cross-lingual comparative approach to investigate the problem of online misinformation. This paper demonstrates how the technological barrier of cross-lingual topic analysis can be overcome with aligned word-embedding algorithms.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-09-2020-0417

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social media application and the spread of COVID-19 infodemic in Nigeria.

A descriptive survey research design was used for this study. A total of 1,200 social media users, regardless of their professions, were randomly selected for the study betweenmid-June and July 2020. Stratified and purposive sampling techniques were used for this study. The questionnaire was designed using Google form and administered using WhatsApp and Telegram to social media users above 18 years old in Nigeria. The data generated was analyzed using descriptive (frequency count) and inferential (mean) statistics, and was presented in tables.

It was found that people make use of social media during COVID-19 pandemic for diverse reasons such as listening to announcement to be informed, knowing the necessary measures to take by those infected and spreading up-to-date information on the pandemic. Social media tools were highly used during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially WhatsApp and Zoom. Findings reflected that misinformation was spread on social media. This study also showed that the infodemic associated with COVID-19 is managed by confirming the source of the information before sharing it and trusting information from reliable sources.

The result of this research will contribute to the body of knowledge on social media application, fake news and the spread of COVID-19 infodemic in Nigeria and beyond.

Infodemic is a disaster in the health sector. The spread of infodemic is capable of misleading people, losing trust in government, health providers and health regulatory authorities. This study will help social media users to know how to properly manage social media infodemic during a pandemic or any health-related situations.

This study is novel as it approaches fake news from a COVID-19 perspective. Very few articles emanate from the developing countries in this area. This was because most of the narrative around fake news previously centered around the Western occurrences such as the Iraqi invasion by the USA, the US presidential elections and BREXIT. COVID-19 has demonstrated that the developing world is not immune from fake news as well. This study, therefore, assessed the management of infodemic associated with COVID-19 in Nigeria.

The pandemic has severely affected sharing economy businesses specially ride-hailing services due to high levels of human-touch points. This research investigates the impact of COVID-19 infodemic, identification, and emotional support on intention to use ride-hailing. The authors further examine the moderating effects of internalization, compliance, social currency and informational support in the proposed conceptual model.

The data were collected from 412 respondents from Delhi in India, and hypothesized relationships were tested using hierarchical regression.

The results indicate that COVID-19 infodemic has a negative association with intention to use ride-hailing. Identification and emotional support show a positive association with intention to use ride-hailing. The results also support internalization and compliance as moderators between infodemic, identification and intention to use ride-hailing. Further, social currency and information support moderate the relationship between emotional support and intention to use.

This is the first research, which adds to the expanding literature on ride-hailing, especially during the post-pandemic period of “new normal”.

The COVID-19 outbreak has been accompanied by a massive “infodemic”, characterized by an overabundance of information, both accurate and inaccurate, making it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance. This study aims to investigate how the COVID-19 infodemic (i.e. information overload and untrustworthiness) influences consumers’ emotions (i.e. fear, anxiety and hope) by shaping their cognitive appraisals of the pandemic (i.e. perceived risk and uncertainty). Additionally, this study also investigates how individual differences (i.e. COVID-19 involvement and infection experience) impact their emotion formation process.

Data were collected from 815 US consumers aged between 18 and 65 in November 2021 via an online survey. Structural equation modeling and multi-group comparison from AMOS 23 were used to test the proposed relationships.

Information overload increased one’s perceived risk and perceived uncertainty of COVID-19, which, in turn, structured the emotional states of fear, anxiety and hope. Information untrustworthiness had a significant impact on risk perception, which led to an increased feeling of fear. Additionally, individuals’ COVID-19 involvement and their infection experience with the coronavirus were found to moderate the cognitive appraisal process in developing emotions.

This study offers insights into the relationships between the information landscape and cognitive appraisals regarding health crises, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only enriching emotional well-being literature, it also lends managerial implications for effective communication strategies in global health emergencies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2023-0616

This article examines the misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic in social media and electronic media, as well as whether the existing legal administration and laws in Bangladesh, Singapore, and Vietnam are adequate to combat the infodemic. People who believe misinformation and fake news about Coronavirus, prevention, and treatment may put their lives in danger. False information about Coronavirus has spread throughout the world, not just in South and Southeast Asian countries, causing widespread concern in the global healthcare community. We employed a qualitative approach as well as the case study analysis method. Case studies were conducted using news reports and news channels. We examined the legal provisions of the People's Republic of Bangladesh's Constitution, as well as factual analyses of Singapore and Vietnam. We discovered the impact of misinformation dissemination through social and electronic media, which is prevalent not only among rural Bangladeshis but also in almost all classes in Singapore and Vietnam, and how such influence can be detrimental to the interests of Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Singapore.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Library and Information Science (LIS) students’ understanding of infodemic and related terminologies and their ability to categorize COVID-19-related problematic information types using examples from social media platforms.

The participants of this study were LIS students from a public-funded university located at the south coast of Bangladesh. An online survey was conducted which, in addition to demographic and study information, asked students to identify the correct definition of infodemic and related terminologies and to categorize the COVID-related problematic social media posts based on their inherent problem characteristics. The correct answer for each definition and task question was assigned a score of “1”, whereas the wrong answer was coded as “0”. The percentages of correctness score for total and each category of definition and task-specific questions were computed. The independent sample t-test and ANOVA were run to examine the differences in total and category-specific scores between student groups.

The findings revealed that students’ knowledge concerning the definition of infodemic and related terminologies and the categorization of COVID-19-related problematic social media posts was poor. There was no significant difference in correctness scores between student groups in terms of gender, age and study levels.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time an effort was made to understand LIS students’ recognition and classification of problematic information. The findings can assist LIS departments in revising and improving the existing information literacy curriculum for students.

The debate about tackling online misinformation and disinformation is not unique to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the health crisis has elevated the danger of misleading information circulated on social media. Labelled as ‘infodemic’, the problem of COVID-19-related misinformation and disinformation prompted governments and social media platforms around the globe to impose various speech restrictions. The public and private policy frameworks aiming to curb the spread of the infodemic were adopted in a state of emergency and without proper scrutiny. Yet, they are shaping the future of content regulation, possibly affecting freedom of speech and other democratic values for years to come. This chapter looks at the key problematic aspects of actions taken by governments and social media platforms to address COVID-19-related misinformation and disinformation and discusses the possible long-term effects of these measures.

A wide choice of varied information and data-based tools is reviewed in order to determine their ability treating symptoms of the COVID-19 infodemic. Several literacies and derived literacies, presumably having the ability to fulfil these roles are enumerated. There is also a review of the impact of applying deconstruction, understanding, and anticipation as well as of tools for mitigating overload phenomena, and communication overload.

The article reviews literacies deemed to promise reducing the impact of the information crisis, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A non-exhaustive review of literature, taken from sources of varied disciplines, resulting from reverse snowballing and forward citation mining confirmed that there is a wide choice of solutions from among literacies, derived literacies and other approaches that have the potential to combat annoyance and anxiety, caused by the infodemic.

No other, published research has looked at such a wide range of literacies and derived literacies, as well as other, related approaches linked them to the COVID-19 infodemic.