DDRIG in DRMS: An Investigation of Harm Perceptions from Communications on Social Media about COVID Vaccines

在新冠肺炎等健康危机期间，在社交媒体上传播没有科学依据的健康信息已被证明会对社区造成严重损害。这些伤害既包括身体伤害(如生命损失、长期和短期健康伤害或经济伤害)，也包括心理伤害(如对他人失去信任、情感痛苦或困惑)。这些负面影响可能会导致错误的决定，比如饮用漂白剂来治愈病毒感染。在调查这种类型的伤害时，这项建议侧重于两个具体的研究问题：(1)如何在健康危机中表征来自没有科学支持的信息的伤害感知？(2)在健康危机中，伤害感知与社交媒体对话有何关联？研究结果有可能促进国民健康和福利。疾病预防控制中心和世卫组织等官方卫生组织可能会更好地了解弱势群体的威胁和需求认知。了解人们对有害的不准确信息的看法最终有助于提高社交媒体渠道的可靠性。更广泛的影响包括支持一篇博士论文，在专业渠道传播研究结果，与此研究项目相关的教学模块是德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥分校拉美裔服务机构课程的一部分。尽管先前曾在新冠肺炎大流行和新冠肺炎疫苗背景下处理不准确信息造成的危害，但据我们所知，还没有研究表征在健康危机中对此类信息的伤害感知。该项目将重点放在感知的伤害上，而不是实际的伤害上，并检查感知的伤害和实际伤害之间的相互作用。研究集中在新冠肺炎疫苗的背景下，检查了几种包含不准确信息的新冠肺炎疫苗情景，并使用三个特征来表征该信息的危害，即未知性、恐惧性和可管理性。该项目利用文本挖掘技术，研究了Twitter上的伤害感知和交流性质之间的关联。这是对在大流行背景下不准确的信息造成的危害进行量化衡量的早期尝试。该项目在一个研究不足的领域推进知识，并利用Twitter上的对话来调查与危害特征有关的交流的性质。这项研究将社交媒体数据与传播理论联系起来，以揭示社交媒体在危机传播中的作用。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

During health crises such as COVID-19, dissemination of health information on social media that is not backed by science has been shown to result in serious harms to communities. These harms include both physical harms (such as losses of life, long- and short-term health harms, or financial harms) and psychological harms (such as loss of trusts on others, emotional sufferings, or confusion). These negative effects can lead to wrong decisions such as drinking bleach to cure the viral infection. In investigating this type of harm, this proposal focuses on two specific research questions: (1) How can the perceptions of harm from information not backed by science be characterized in health crises? (2) How are harm perceptions associated with social media conversations in a health crisis? Results have the potential to advance national health and welfare. Official health organizations such as the CDC and WHO, may gain a better understanding of vulnerable population’s threat and need perceptions. An understanding of people’s perceptions of harmful inaccurate information ultimately helps improve the reliability of social media channels. Broader impacts include the support of a doctoral dissertation, dissemination of findings at professional outlets, and teaching modules related to this research project are part of a course at University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).Despite prior efforts handling harms from inaccurate information in both COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccine contexts, to our knowledge, there is no research that has characterized harm perceptions from such information in health crises. This project takes a sharp focus on perceived harms, rather than on actual harms, and examines the interplay between perceived harms and actual harms. Focusing on the COVID-19 vaccine context, studies examine several COVID-19 vaccine scenarios containing inaccurate information, and characterize harm from that information using three characteristics, i.e., unknown and dread and manageability. Using text mining the project examines the association between harm perceptions and nature of communication in Twitterverse. This is an early attempt at quantitatively measure the harm that results from inaccurate information in the pandemic context. The project advances knowledge in an under-studied area and use conversations in Twitterverse to investigate the nature of communication with respect to harm characteristics. This research bridges social media data with communication theory to unpack the role of social media around crisis communication.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.