Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Infodemiology
Date Submitted: Apr 26, 2021
Date Accepted: Jun 21, 2021
The Impact of COVID-19 on Conspiracy Hypotheses and Risk Perception in Italy: an Infodemiological Survey through Google Trends.
ABSTRACT
Background:
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused the worst international crisis since World War II. Italy was one of the countries most affected by both the pandemic and the related infodemic. The success of anti-COVID-19 strategies and future public health policies in Italy cannot prescind from containment of fake news and divulgation of correct information.
Objective:
The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on conspiracy attitudes and risk perception of Italian web users.
Methods:
Google Trends was used to monitor users' web interest in specific topics, such as conspiracy hypotheses, vaccine side effects, and pollution/climate change. The keywords adopted to represent these topics were mined from Bufale.net – an Italian website specialized in detecting online hoaxes – and Google Trends suggestions (i.e., related topics and related queries). Relative search volumes of the timelapse 2016-2020 (pre-COVID-19) and 2020-2021 (post-COVID-19) were compared through percentage difference (∆_%) and Welch’s t-test (t). When data series were not stationary, other ad-hoc criteria were used. The trend slopes were assessed through Sen's Slope (SS). The significance thresholds have been indicatively set at P=.05 and t=1.9.
Results:
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically enforced Italian netizens' conspiracy attitudes (Δ_%∈[60,288],t∈[6,12]). The regional web interest towards conspiracy-related queries has increased and become more homogeneous compared to the pre-COVID-19 period ((RSV) ̅=80±2.8,t_min=1.8,Δ_(min%)=+12.4,min ∆_(SD%)=-25.8). Besides, a growing trend in web interest in the infodemic YouTube channel "ByoBlu" has been highlighted. The web interest in fake news has increased more than that in anti-hoax services (t_1=11.3 vs t_2=4.5,Δ_1=+157.6 vs Δ_2=+84.7). Equivalently, the web interest in vaccine side effects exceeded that in pollution/climate change (SS_vac=0.22,P<.001 vs SS_pol=0.05,P<.001,∆_%=+296.4).
Conclusions:
COVID-19 has given a significant boost to online conspiracy attitudes in Italy. In particular, the average web interest in conspiracy hypotheses has increased and become more uniform across regions. The pandemic accelerated an already growing trend in users' interest towards some fake news sources, including the 500,000 subscribers YouTube channel "ByoBlu" (canceled for disinformation in March 2021). The risk perception related to COVID-19 vaccines has been so distorted that vaccine side effects-related queries outweighed those relating to pollution and climate change, which are much more urgent issues. Based on these findings, it is necessary that the Italian authorities implement more effective infoveillance systems and communication by the mass media is less sensationalistic and more consistent with the available scientific evidence. In this context, Google Trends can be used to monitor the users' response to specific infodemiological countermeasures. Further research is needed to understand the psychological mechanisms that regulate risk perception.
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