COVID-19 and the Infodemic: An Overview of the Role and Impact of Social Media, the Evolution of Medical Knowledge, and Emerging Problems

“…HBM-based analyses rest upon the psychosocial assumption of health being considered of high priority by the targeted population [49]. Although the results of this study do indicate a strong prioritization of one's personal health as a facilitator for receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, further health and non-health related factors that may also influence the decision-making process but go beyond the scope of HBM should be considered in future research attempts.…”

“…Interestingly, having actively searched information on mental health of children was associated with a perceived worsening. This could be explained from 2 perspectives: on the one hand, the parent may have sought information after the child's health worsened; on the other hand, it is possible that the infodemic accompanying the pandemic not only fueled information‐seeking behavior but also a potentially negative perception of health in the pandemic context, especially mental health 66 . A reported increase in digital devices use was also associated with a perceived mental health worsening, in line with findings highlighting that screen time can be associated with poor psychological outcomes 50,67 .…”

“…Sasidharan et al argued that if there is an overabundance of articles to justify rumors or not, which also leaded to an increase in information epidemics, then for this type of problem we should filter the data effectively [ 62 ]. Corinti et al’s data includes only English language sources and does not fully cover a global sample of data, which requires more collection of the needed data [ 63 ]. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the challenges in topic discovery, data collection, and data preparation in the emerging field of Infodemic.…”