Communication analysis of the COVID-19 infodemic by medical practitioners in China: A mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND

The infodemic during the public health policy transformation in Chinese mainland is known; however, the contributions of medical practitioners have not been evaluated. This study aimed to estimate the role of medical practitioners during the COVID-19 infodemic in Chinese mainland and reveal content structure and spatiotemporal features.

METHODS

Data from medical practitioner accounts with the highest influence were collected from Sina-Weibo. Original contents were collected from March 1st, 2022 to October 1st, 2023. Misinformation were identified based on cross-validated content analysis. Propagation index, spatiotemporal and network analysis were performed.

FINDINGS: A total of 236,775 posts were crawled, with 28,218 posts from 432 accounts filtered through a keyword search and 5825 out of 28,218 (20.6 %) posts from 287 out of 432 (66.4 %) accounts identified as COVID-19-related content. 640 out of 5825 (11.0 %) posts from 112 out of 287 (39.0 %) accounts were identified as misinformation and classified into 5 main types and 6 subtypes. Differences between internal and external accounts were reflected in the distribution of misinformation types. Propagators from various professions had different tendencies in terms of type, and several misinformation repropagation modes were observed. Social network analysis revealed strong correlations among propagators.

INTERPRETATION: To our knowledge, this is the first mixed-methods study to examine the characteristics of medical practitioners as propagators in the infodemic in Chinese mainland. Our research suggested that Chinese medical practitioners significantly contributed to the COVID-19 infodemic in social media. This could exacerbate post-pandemic societal distrust in the medical system, potentially having far-reaching public health implications.