JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused not only a disease epidemic, but also an infodemic. Due to the increased use of the Internet and social media, along with the development of communication technology, information has spread faster and farther during the COVID-19 infodemic. Moreover, the increased choice of information sources has made it more complex to make good decisions regarding information. Although social media is the most common source of misinformation, there are cases of misinformation being spread by other forms of media. It is unclear which media sources are used by people with high health literacy and information comprehension. Clarifying this may help to elucidate how to spread true information to a larger number of people to bring the infodemic under control.

Objective:

Our aim was to determine the relationship between health literacy, or the comprehension of misinformation and the media used to obtain information.

Methods:

An online cross-sectional study was conducted in November 2021. The participants were 477 individuals aged 20–69 years. After obtaining consent to participate in the study, the participants were asked about sociodemographic indicators, sources of health-related information, health literacy, and comprehension of COVID-19 misinformation. Sources of health-related information were categorized into 4 types: mass media, digital media, social media, and face-to-face communication. Multiple regression analysis was conducted with health literacy and comprehension as dependent variables, the 4 media as independent variables, and age and gender as adjustment variables.

Results:

Mass media was the most frequently used source of information, followed by digital media, face-to-face communication, and social media. There were no differences in the use of mass media, digital media, or face-to-face communication according to age group. Social media use was significantly higher among those in their 20s than among other age groups. Multiple regression analysis showed that higher health literacy was associated with access to information from digital media and face-to-face communication. Higher comprehension was also associated with access to information from mass media, digital media, and face-to-face communication.

Conclusions:

We considered that health literacy is important for accessing necessary information from digital media, where there is a lot of information, both true and false, and from various forms of communication. It was also suggested that information may be understood differently depending on how it is conveyed to users. Thus, improving health literacy and being able to effectively use information from digital media and face-to-face communication may improve each persons’ information comprehension. Moreover, improving the health literacy of younger generations, who are the primary users of social media, may prevent the spread of misinformation. By improving the health literacy of each individual, we may be able to cope with the infodemic.