Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 22, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 22, 2020 - Apr 30, 2020
Date Accepted: May 4, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: May 5, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The Impact of Social Media on Hyped Panic during the COVID-19 Pandemic 'The Iraq Case'
ABSTRACT
Background:
During the recent three months of 2020, a lot of information and news reports about the COVID-19 has been published on social media networks; so much that it is being called the first true social-media “infodemic”. According to scientific resources the social media infodemic spreads panic and affects the mental health of users.
Objective:
This study aimed to find out the effects of social media on spreading panic of COVID-19, and its impact on mental health in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Methods:
To carry out this study, an online questionnaire was conducted in the Iraqi Kurdistan, and 516 social media users were sampled, and a content analysis method used for data analysis. The statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS version 12) was used to reduce the data to a manageable size.
Results:
The study determined that social media has a significant impact spreading fears and panic of the COVID-19 outbreaks in Iraqi Kurdistan. Along with this, it has a negative influence on people’s mental health and psychological wellbeing. According to the study results, Facebook is the top used social media responsible for spreading panic of the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraq. Most of the participants in the study believe that social media had a significant psychological impact on them during this COVID-19 outbreak.
Conclusions:
Social media has various effects on mental health. This study concluded that social media was responsible for spreading panic of COVID-19 among people in Iraqi Kurdistan. Meanwhile, during this health crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak, trust among citizens and the state has eroded, which is why the official statements, news and information provided by health ministries and government bodies cannot satisfy people’s needs. Civilians therefore rely heavily on social media platforms to gain information about the virus. The nature of the impacts of social media panic among people is different depending on the gender, age and level of education. It can be seen that social media has played a key role in spreading panic of COVID-19 outbreak in Iraq and other countries.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.