What Are They Thinking? Exploring College Students' Mental Processing and Decision-Making About COVID-19 (Mis)Information on Social Media.

ABSTRACT: More and more, people are abandoning the active pursuit of news, assuming instead that important information will be pushed to them via their social media networks. This approach to news makes people susceptible to the vast amounts of misinformation online, yet research on the effects of this kind of engagement is mixed. More research is needed on technology incidental learning effects, defined as changes in knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors as a result of being exposed to information while pursuing goals other than learning (e.g., entertainment). In this study, we examined how 51 college students responded to incidental exposure to accurate and inaccurate COVID-19 information delivered via a simulated social media environment. Participants' verbalizations during think-aloud pro

SUBMITTER: Greene JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11177323 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature