Measuring information overload and message fatigue toward COVID-19 prevention messages in USA and China

The role of social media messages and content creators in shaping COVID-19 vaccination intentions

Introduction

Social media plays a crucial role in shaping health behaviors by influencing users' perceptions and engagement with health-related content. Understanding these dynamics is important as new social media technologies and changing health behaviors shape how people engage with health messages.

Aim

The current study explored the relationship between the characteristics of content creators, the messaging strategies employed in social media, and users' engagement with social media content, and whether these features are linked to users' behavioral intentions.

Methods

This study adopts a cross-sectional survey design. A total of 1,141 participants were recruited. We have developed a structural equation model to investigate the relationships between the characteristics of content creators, the messaging strategies employed in social media, users' perceived HBM constructs, user engagement, and users' behavioral intentions.

Results

Results revealed that social media posts focusing on self-efficacy were linked to increased willingness to engage in healthy behaviors. Additionally, individuals who demonstrate stronger perceptions of HBM constructs-such as higher perceived susceptibility and benefits of vaccination-are more likely to engage with posts, which was associated with higher vaccination intention. Posts authored by celebrities garnered a relatively higher number of favorites, while a greater proportion of politicians as content creators was linked to increased user comment intention.

Conclusion

Our study underscores the potential of integrating the Health Belief Model into social media to help promote health behaviors like the COVID-19 vaccination. Furthermore, our findings offer valuable insights for professionals and policymakers, guiding them in crafting effective message strategies and selecting appropriate sources to promote health behaviors on social media platforms.

Psychometric Analysis of Items Evaluating Health Belief Model Constructs in Social Media Posts: Application of Rasch Measurement Model

Social media is a crucial tool for health communication as it provides an immediate, wide-reaching platform to share information, correct misinformation, and promote health behaviors. The Health Belief Model (HBM) offers a structured approach for designing more effective social media messages by employing unique constructs predicting health behaviors, such as severity, susceptibility, benefits, barriers, and self-efficacy. While prior research has explored HBM constructs in health messages, most studies have collected the survey data with items lacking robust psychometric evidence, particularly in evaluating social media posts. This study addresses this gap by using Rasch Measurement Theory (RMT) to analyze the psychometric properties of HBM items evaluating social media posts promoting COVID-19 vaccination. The findings indicate that severity, benefits, and barriers are the most reliable HBM constructs in social media posts, while susceptibility and self-efficacy are underutilized in health messaging for social media. Also, dimensionality analysis confirms distinct patterns, but unexplained variance suggests that additional factors influence vaccine messaging, raising validity concerns. These results underscore the need to refine HBM-based message strategies by emphasizing overlooked constructs and improving item effectiveness. This study provides guidelines for using HBM-related measures in social media by establishing comprehensive psychometric properties, especially when applied in social media contexts. It also presents practical guidelines for designing and evaluating social media health messages, ensuring they effectively utilize HBM constructs to promote positive health behaviors. Future research should explore measurement invariance and content creators' emphasis on HBM constructs, leveraging high-engagement tweets while expanding to diverse perspectives for broader applicability.

The Role of Health Belief Model Constructs and Content Creator Characteristics in Social Media Engagement: Insights from COVID-19 Vaccine Tweets

INTRODUCTION

The Health Belief Model (HBM) has been widely studied, but it is unclear how social media post creators use HBM constructs to influence the public's awareness of health topics, particularly for COVID-19 preventative health behaviors. Moreover, there is limited knowledge about how content creators enhance user engagement with COVID-19 vaccine tweets.

METHODS

A content analysis of COVID-19 vaccine tweets (n = 362) examined how HBM constructs were used in social media posts and their relationship to content creator characteristics (e.g., race, education level) and user engagement behaviors (e.g., number of favorites).

FINDINGS

Content creators' tweets about COVID-19-related topics generally centered on two HBM constructs-benefits and barriers-while fewer tweets emphasized perceived susceptibility or self-efficacy; tweets containing these constructs were retweeted less often. Findings revealed that tweets from politicians, health experts, and white and Asian sources emphasized the perceived benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine. Individual tweets, especially from Black individuals and celebrities, generated more user engagement.

CONCLUSIONS

Understanding the factors that contribute to social media user engagement with health-related content is important for designing more focused and impactful health communication campaigns and promoting healthier habits and perspectives. Thus, by demonstrating the possible relevance of the HBM to digital communication strategies or health campaigns, our study provides useful guidance for health promoters and policymakers who use social media to raise public health awareness.

The impact of health information echo chambers on older adults avoidance behavior: the mediating role of information fatigue and the moderating role of trait mindfulness

Background

In the digital media era, the prevalence of algorithm-driven content push has intensified the health information echo chambers phenomenon, characterized by excessive homogenization and overload of information. This phenomenon may negatively impact the older adults, a "digitally vulnerable" group, by limiting their access to diverse health information and potentially inducing health information avoidance behaviors. However, the psychological mechanisms within this impact process remain unclear, and this study aims to explore them. Additionally, current study introduces trait mindfulness as a potential intervention tool in reducing health information avoidance behavior among the older adults.

Methods

This study constructs an impact model based on the Stress-Coping Theory and the Stress-Strain-Outcome (SSO) framework. It identifies health information similarity, relevance, and overload as characteristics of the echo chamber, constituting the Stress part; information fatigue as the Strain; and health information avoidance as the Outcome, with trait mindfulness serving as a moderating factor between Strain and Outcome. A cross-sectional survey of 236 older adults individuals aged 60 and above was conducted, and the collected data were analyzed using SmartPLS and SPSS.

Results

The study found that health information similarity and overload significantly increased health information fatigue among the older adults, thereby promoting avoidance behavior, but no significant correlation was found between relevance and fatigue. While there was no significant correlation between trait mindfulness and health information fatigue, it effectively moderated the avoidance behavior induced by fatigue.

Conclusion

Current study reveals the impact of the health information echo chamber phenomenon on health information avoidance behavior among the older adults and the moderating role of trait mindfulness. It emphasizes the importance of breaking the health information echo chamber and promoting diverse information dissemination to improve the health information behavior of the older adults. Furthermore, the moderating role of trait mindfulness demonstrates positive intervention potential, providing the older adults with a psychological adjustment mechanism to accept and process health information with a more open attitude, thereby reducing unproductive avoidance behavior.

Network analysis of pandemic fatigue symptoms in samples from five South American countries

BACKGROUND

Pandemic fatigue generates low motivation or the ability to comply with protective behaviors to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

AIMS

This study aimed to analyze the symptoms of pandemic fatigue through network analysis in individuals from five South American countries.

METHOD

A total of 1,444 individuals from Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay participated and were evaluated using the Pandemic Fatigue Scale. The networks were estimated using the ggmModSelect estimation method and a polychoric correlation matrix was used. Stability assessment of the five networks was performed using the nonparametric resampling method based on the case bootstrap type. For the estimation of network centrality, a metric based on node strength was used, whereas network comparison was performed using a permutation-based approach.

RESULTS

The results showed that the relationships between pandemic fatigue symptoms were strongest in the demotivation dimension. Variability in the centrality of pandemic fatigue symptoms was observed among participating countries. Finally, symptom networks were invariant and almost identical across participating countries.

CONCLUSIONS

This study is the first to provide information on how pandemic fatigue symptoms were related during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The role of collectivism, liberty, COVID fatigue, and fatalism in public support for the zero-COVID policy and relaxing restrictions in China

BACKGROUND

China was the last country in the world to relax COVID-19 restrictions. A successful public health policy requires public support. This analysis examined the factors associated with Chinese support for zero-COVID and relaxing COVID-19 restrictions in China.

METHOD

Two online surveys were conducted among Chinese participants in mainland China on June 10-13 (N = 460) and December 2, 2022 (N = 450). These two samples were similar based on the participants' demographics.

RESULTS

The results revealed that the perceived health consequences of a COVID-19 policy, perceived norms of approving a COVID-19 policy, and hope positively predicted the participants' support for the COVID-19 policy. The results further showed that collectivism and fatalism positively predicted support for zero-COVID and negatively predicted support for relaxing restrictions. COVID fatigue was negatively associated with support for zero-COVID and positively associated with support for relaxing restrictions. Liberty positively predicted support for relaxing restrictions in June and negatively predicted zero-COVID in December 2023. It did not positively or negatively predict support for the policy adopted by the government.

CONCLUSION

Collectivism, liberty, COVID fatigue, and fatalistic beliefs are important considerations connected to public support for a COVID-19 policy. The role of liberty was more nuanced and depended on the survey's time and whether the government adopted the policy.

People Wear Masks when they Ski: Comparing Congruent and Incongruent Behavioral Context Appeals

When advocating for a behavior, persuasive messaging typically focuses on the context that behavior is performed in, such as mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, situating the advocated behavior in a different context, termed an incongruent context appeal, may persuade by increasing attention, novelty, and memorability. The current study tested this supposition in a message experiment. Participants (N = 324) were randomized to view an incongruent context (e.g. skiing) or a congruent context (i.e. COVID-19) appeal advocating for mask wearing. The incongruence appeal had a direct, positive effect on mask wearing intentions and indirect, positive effects via two serial mediation pathways: time spent with the message increased attention through novelty and memorability. Findings suggest that an incongruent context appeal is an effective strategy for persuading audiences in information-saturated environments like the COVID-19 pandemic.

What Factors Will Influence Chinese International Traveling for Leisure in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Role of Health Priorities and Health-Related Information Literacy

China used to be the world's leading nation in terms of international (outward) tourism till the COVID-19 outbreak. However, due to the COVID-19 crisis, several new macro and micro-level factors might affect their international (outward) traveling behavior. The purpose of the current research was to examine the avoidance of international traveling for leisure in the Chinese population. The goal of the study was to highlight the importance of information self-efficacy and digital literacy as the key factors influencing tourists' traveling readiness. To achieve the goal, the study adapted the quantitative instruments from existing sources to map media exhaustion, information overload, and perceived health concerns, i.e., perceived effectiveness of health-protective measures, fear of new possible outbreaks, and pandemic crisis at source and destination. Chinese citizens' opinions were collected during the third quarter of the year 2022. Specifically, the quantitative survey from China collected a total number of 1308 respondents. This study used the statistical analysis software SPSS to analyze collected data. The findings conclude that the role of media is pivotal to shaping and predicting future trends in tourism preferences, perception of protective measures against COVID-19, and perceived seriousness of the pandemic crisis in the Chinese population. In addition, technology readiness (as hard self-efficacy) and health-related information literacy (soft self-efficacy) are critical to cope with the dark aspects of information exhaustion, overload, and pandemic seriousness in the post-truth era. The study is unique, as it examines the role of the seriousness of the pandemic at its source and destination and fear of new outbreaks simultaneously, underlining the potential future of immersive tourism (i.e., virtual reality, augmented reality, or mixed reality-based tourism). This study has drawn interesting theoretical and practical implications for researchers, policymakers, and academicians.