Characterization of Misinformation Dynamics in COVID-19 related health information in online social media

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R01 · $63,106 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Abstract: Social media has become predominant as a source of information for many health care consumers. However false and misleading information are a pervasive problem in this context. Specifically, during CVID-19 pandemic, misinformation has been a significant public health challenge, impeding the effectiveness of public health awareness campaigns and resulting in suboptimal responsiveness to the communication of legitimate risk- related information. In the proposed research, we will apply our “Pragmatics to Reveal Intent in Social Media (PRISM) framework to facilitate automated detection of intent and belief attributes underlying COVID-19 related misinformation. The PRISM framework aims to incorporate and integrate communication intent, semantics and structure of online communication to study social processes and cognitive factors underlying misinformation comprehension. Such analysis forms the foundational step towards characterization of misinformation seeding and perception in digital social settings, ultimately allowing us to develop scalable and reliable computational infrastructure that can help formulate resilient and effective dissemination approaches to negotiate misinformation spread, easing public health burden and informing policy regulations as needed.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10176817
Project number
3R01LM012974-02S1
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCI CTR HOUSTON
Principal Investigator
SAHITI MYNENI
Activity code
R01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2020
Award amount
$63,106
Award type
3
Project period
2020-07-01 → 2021-12-31