Exploring Ontarians’ perceptions of and experiences with misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic (Preprint)

Abstract

Clear, accurate and transparent risk communication is critical to providing policy makers and the public with direction to reduce transmission and implement effective preparedness strategies during a health emergency.

For those living in Canada, we aimed to explore preferred sources of obtaining COVID-19 information, perceptions on the prevalence and drivers of misinformation during the pandemic, and suggestions to optimize health communications during future public health emergencies.

We administered an online survey to residents of Ontario, Canada and aimed to recruit a sample that reflected population diversity with respect to age and gender. Data were collected between June 10, 2020 – December 31, 2020.

A total of 1823 individuals participated in the survey (54% women, 39% men; 54% aged 18-40; 28% aged 41-60, 12% aged 61+). Participants most commonly obtained COVID-19 information from local television news (61%) followed by social media (51%), national/international television news (49%) and friends and family (46%). Approximately 55% of participants encountered misinformation. Participants reported high levels of trust in health authority websites and in healthcare providers; less trustworthy sources included friends and family, talk radio, social media, and blogs/opinion websites. Men were more likely to report encountering misinformation and to trust friends or family and blogs/opinion websites, compared to women. Compared to those aged 18-40 years, participants aged 41+ were more likely to trust all assessed information sources, with the exception of online media sources, and less likely to report encountering misinformation. Of those surveyed, 58% had challenges identifying or appraising COVID-19 information.

Over half of our participants encountered misinformation while seeking COVID-19 information and 58% had challenges identifying or appraising COVID-19 information. Gender and age differences in perceptions of misinformation and trust in information sources were observed. Future research on patterns of information seeking by age and gender may provide useful insights on optimizing health communication during public health emergencies.