RAPID: Measuring Information Consumption and Beliefs During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

近几个月来，COVID-19全球大流行伴随着与大流行相关的虚假信息激增，暴露了通过在线网络传播高质量信息的缺陷，以及我们对危机时期谁最容易受到虚假和误导性信息影响的认识的缺陷。在大流行期间，谁能够区分与COVID-19相关的低质量信息和高质量信息，谁最容易受到低质量信息的影响，这些都是重要的问题。本项目调查在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间和相关期间对虚假和误导性信息的易感性。随着政府机构、民间组织和营利性公司共同努力，打击与冠状病毒相关的虚假信息，了解谁最有可能相信虚假信息，而不信任真实信息，对于制定和分发有针对性的公共卫生信息是必要的。社会和行为文献对当前疫情如何影响人们评估信息真实性的能力提供了相互矛盾的见解。该项目将测试一系列理论上有根据的假设，即为什么我们可以预期人们正确识别信息真实性的能力会在COVID-19期间发生变化，以及为什么我们可以预期人们识别COVID-19相关信息真实性的能力与确定非COVID-19相关信息真实性的能力不同。通过在几个月的时间里向普通公民群体和专业事实检查员提供实时新闻文章，该项目将调查实时对虚假信息易感性的个人层面决定因素，是否可以雇用普通公民来众包高质量和低质量信息的标签，以及众包事实核查是否可以减少信息生态系统中虚假信息的流行。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。

In recent months, the global COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a surge in pandemic-related false information, exposing shortcomings in the diffusion of high quality information through online networks and in our understanding of who is most susceptible to false and misleading information during times of crisis. Important questions remain about who is able to discriminate low-quality information from high-quality information related to COVID-19 and who is most vulnerable to low-quality information during the pandemic. This project investigates susceptibility to false and misleading information both in the time of, and related to, the COVID-19 pandemic. As government agencies, civic organizations, and for-profit companies work together to combat coronavirus-related false information, an understanding of who is most likely to believe false information — and mistrust true information — is necessary for crafting and distributing targeted public health communications. Social and behavioral literature offer competing insights into how the current epidemic might impact people’s ability to evaluate the veracity of information. This project will test a series of theoretically informed hypotheses about why we might expect people’s ability to correctly identify the veracity of information to change in the time of COVID-19, and why we might expect people’s ability to discern the veracity of COVID-19 related information to differ from their ability to ascertain the veracity of non-Covid-19 related information. By sourcing real time news articles to crowds of ordinary citizens as well as professional fact checkers over a multi-month period, this project will investigate the individual-level determinants of susceptibility to false information in real time, whether ordinary citizens can be employed to crowdsource the labeling of high- and low-quality information, and whether crowdsourced fact-checking can reduce the prevalence of false information in the information ecosystem.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.