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

在COVID-19等卫生危机期间，在社交媒体上传播没有科学依据的卫生信息已被证明会对社区造成严重危害。这些伤害既包括身体上的伤害（如生命损失、长期和短期的健康伤害或经济损失），也包括心理上的伤害（如对他人失去信任、情感上的痛苦或困惑）。这些负面影响会导致错误的决定，比如喝漂白剂来治疗病毒感染。在调查这类危害时，本提案侧重于两个具体的研究问题：(1)在健康危机中，如何从没有科学依据的信息中感知危害？(2)在健康危机中，伤害认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。官方卫生组织，如疾病预防控制中心和世界卫生组织，可能会更好地了解弱势群体的威胁和需求。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博士论文，在专业渠道传播研究结果，以及与该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（西班牙裔服务机构）课程的一部分。尽管之前在COVID-19大流行和COVID-19疫苗背景下都曾努力处理不准确信息造成的危害，但据我们所知，目前还没有研究表明，在卫生危机中，这类信息的危害认知是有特点的。这个项目将重点放在感知伤害上，而不是实际伤害上，并研究感知伤害和实际伤害之间的相互作用。以COVID-19疫苗背景为重点，研究了几种包含不准确信息的COVID-19疫苗情景，并使用三个特征（即未知、恐惧和可管理性）描述了这些信息的危害。使用文本挖掘，该项目检查了twitter世界中伤害感知和交流性质之间的关系。这是在大流行背景下定量衡量信息不准确造成的危害的初步尝试。该项目在一个未被充分研究的领域推进知识，并利用twitter世界中的对话来调查交流的本质与危害特征。本研究将社交媒体数据与传播理论相结合，揭示社交媒体在危机传播中的作用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.