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The Impact of the COVID-19 Infodemic on Depression and Sleep Disorders: Focusing on Uncertainty Reduction Strategies and Level of Interpretation Theory

JMIR formative research, 2022-01, Vol.6 (1), p.e32552-e32552 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

Soyoung Jung, Sooin Jung. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 31.01.2022. ;2022. This work is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. ;Soyoung Jung, Sooin Jung. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 31.01.2022. 2022 ;ISSN: 2561-326X ;EISSN: 2561-326X ;DOI: 10.2196/32552 ;PMID: 34870609

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  • Title:
    The Impact of the COVID-19 Infodemic on Depression and Sleep Disorders: Focusing on Uncertainty Reduction Strategies and Level of Interpretation Theory
  • Author: Jung, Soyoung ; Jung, Sooin
  • Subjects: Behavior ; Communication ; Coronaviruses ; COVID-19 ; Disease transmission ; Epidemics ; Medical supplies ; Mental depression ; Mental health ; Original Paper ; Pandemics ; Recommender systems ; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 ; Shopping ; Sleep disorders ; Social networks ; User generated content
  • Is Part Of: JMIR formative research, 2022-01, Vol.6 (1), p.e32552-e32552
  • Description: During the COVID-19 pandemic, information diffusion about the COVID-19 has attracted public attention through social media. The World Health Organization declared an infodemic of COVID-19 on February 15, 2020. Misinformation and disinformation, including overwhelming amounts of information about COVID-19 on social media, could promote adverse psychological effects. This study used the Psychological Distance and Level of Construal theory (CLT) to predict peoples' negative psychological symptoms from social media usage. In this study, the CLT intended to show peoples' psychological proximity to objects and events with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this study links the uncertainty reduction strategy (URS) and CLT for COVID-19-related preventive behaviors and affective reactions to assess their effects on mental health problems. A path model was tested (N=297) with data from a web-based survey to examine how social media usage behaviors are associated with URS and psychological distance with COVID-19 (based on the CLT), leading to preventive behaviors and affective reactions. Finally, the path model was used to examine how preventive behaviors and affective reactions are associated with mental health problems including anxiety and sleep disorder. After measuring participants' social media usage behavior, we found that an increase in general social media usage led to higher use of the URS and lower construal level on COVID-19. The URS is associated with preventive behaviors, but the CLT did not show any association with preventive behaviors; however, it increases affective reactions. Moreover, increased preventive behavior showed negative associations with symptoms of mental health problems; that is, depression and sleep disorder. However, the affective reaction tends to be positively associated with depression and sleep disorder. Owing to the infodemic of COVID-19, the psychological perception of the pandemic negatively influenced users' mental health problems. Our results imply that the information from social media usage heightened concerns and had a lower construal level; this does not facilitate taking preventive actions but rather reinforces the negative emotional reaction and mental health problems. Thus, higher URS usage is desirable.
  • Publisher: Canada: JMIR Publications
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 2561-326X
    EISSN: 2561-326X
    DOI: 10.2196/32552
    PMID: 34870609
  • Source: PubMed Central
    Directory of Open Access Journals
    Coronavirus Research Database
    ProQuest Central
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