Covid-19 cure perceptions and media use in India

ABSTRACT

Background

During the early phases of Covid-19, social media platforms became a significant source of misinformation, and India emerged as a global hotspot. Studies show that ‘miracle cure’ for preventing and treating Covid-19 infection has been a prominent topic of misinformation. This study explores the extent to which beliefs in cure for Covid-19 in three prominent medical traditions popular in India are associated with the exposure to and trust in various sources from which the public access information.

Methods

We conducted an online structured questionnaire survey of 500 respondents in August 2020 in four major cities of India.

Results

Despite the scientific consensus at that time that there was no cure for Covid-19, close to three-quarters of our respondents believe that there was a cure in at least one of the three popular medical traditions in India: Allopathy, Homeopathy, and Ayurveda. We find that exposure to and trust in WhatsApp are associated with false beliefs regarding the existence of a cure for Covid-19 (p = 0.001 and p = 0.014, respectively). While trust in science is associated with correct beliefs (p = 0.025), there is evidence that trust in government information may foster incorrect beliefs (p = 0.031).

Conclusions

The high trust in scientific research and its potential ability to instill correct beliefs could be exploited to combat Covid-19 misinformation in India. Potential interventions such as awareness campaigns to increase digital media literacy, regulating social media platforms, and voluntary content regulation by social media platforms – might help policymakers tackle Covid-19 related misinformation effectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• misinformation
• social media
• information sources
• cure

Disclaimer statements

Ethical approval The study received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. The IRB approval number is IIMA IRB 20–29 dated 30 June 2020.

Conflict of interest No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding This study is part of a project funded by the Research and Publications division of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. The funding was awarded to Rama Mohana R Turaga with the award number: IIMA/R&P/20-21/SRP-4/9.

Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge the guidance of Sandip Chakrabarti in the conceptualization of the study and his valuable comments on the earlier drafts of the paper. We also thank the Research and Publications Division of IIM Ahmedabad for funding the survey. We are thankful to anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive suggestions and feedback.

Author's contribution RMT conceptualized and designed the study. RMT performed data analysis and interpretation. AA and RMT prepared the original draft of the manuscript. AA and RMT revised the original draft. AA performed the review and editing of the manuscript. Both authors approved the version to be published.

Availability of data and material The authors can provide the data supporting this study's findings upon request.

Notes

1 Though disinformation and misinformation both refer to incorrect/false information, the difference lies in the intention of agents who create, produce or distribute this information. Unlike misinformation, disinformation is created/ produced or distributed with the intention to cause harm [26]. Considering the purpose of our paper, the distinction between the two kinds is not critical, thus we have used the terms interchangeably.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Areiba Arif

Areiba Arif is a Ph.D. student in Public Systems at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. Her research interests involve health behaviors, health policy and public health management.

Rama Mohana R. Turaga

Rama Mohana R. Turaga is an Associate Professor in Public Systems at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. His research and teaching focus on sustainability, broadly defined.