Other COVID-19 research

Year	Project Title
2020	Live Reviews of COVID-19 Research: Automatic Updating and Visualization of Rapid Reviews of COVID-19 Interventions and Treatments Ongoing Principal investigators: Chris Khoo (Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information) & Andrea Nanetti (School of Art, Design and Media) Collaborators: Hedren Sum (NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity), Pwee Keng Ho (Health Services Branch, Changi General Hospital), Spencer Groot (Head of User Experience, Elsevier, RELX) During a pandemic, policy makers and healthcare professionals have to make evidence-based decisions quickly, based on scientific evidence. Research papers related to COVID-19 are being published at breakneck speed, making it difficult to keep abreast of research findings of different types and quality. Systematic literature reviews synthesize published research results and make evidence-based recommendations, but take much time and effort to develop. At this time of COVID-19 pandemic, “rapid reviews” are being issued by Cochrane and government health agencies. However, even rapid reviews are labour-intensive to produce and can become out-of-date quickly. This project seeks to develop automatic information extraction and ontology modelling methods for updating systematic/rapid reviews with new published results. A systematic or rapid review that is continually updated is referred to as a live review. Updated information added to a systematic/rapid review can cause information overload if not appropriately organized, synthesized, and presented. Thus, the project will also develop different visualizations of the review and information updates.
2020	Emergence of cyberchondria amid COVID-19 pandemic In preparation By Kim HK & Tandoc Jr. E Funded by: WhatsApp Research Award and MOE Tier 1 Research Grant This study examined how cyberchondria emerges with repeated information seeking on COVID-19 during the early pandemic period. Using a three-wave panel survey, the results showed that information seeking increased negative emotions, which led to subsequent information seeking to develop cyberchondria on COVID-19.
2020	COVID-19 misinformation and prevention behaviors Under Review By Kim HK & Tandoc Jr. E Funded by: WhatsApp Research Award and MOE Tier 1 Research Grant This study examines how exposure to misinformation about COVID-19 influences prevention behaviors. Using a three-wave panel survey, we found that exposure to misinformation prompts actual engagement in misinformed behaviors, while discouraging evidence-based practices.
2020	Uncovering Temporal Differences in Covid-19 Tweets Ongoing By Han Zheng, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Chei Sian Lee, Edmund Wei Jian Lee, Yin Leng Theng In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding how the public responds to various initiatives is an important step in assessing current and future policy implementations. In this paper, we analyzed Twitter tweets using topic modeling to uncover the issues surrounding people’s discussion of the disease. Our focus was on temporal differences in topics, prior and after the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic. Nine topics were identified in our analysis, each of which showed distinct levels of discussion over time. Our results suggest that as the pandemic progresses, the concerns of the public vary as new developments come to light.
2020	Media communication, online falsehoods and population responses surrounding the novel coronavirus disease crisis (COVID-19) in Singapore Published in JMIR Health & Surveillance, Vol 6, No. 2 (Apr-Jun) View here: https://publichealth.jmir.org/2020/2/e19447/ By May Oo Lwin, Jiahui Lu, Anita Sheldenkar, Peter Johannes Schulz, Wonsun Shin, Raj Gupta, Yinping Yang. Funded by: National Medical Research Council (“NMRC”) COVID-19 Research Fund With the World Health Organization’s pandemic declaration and government-initiated actions against coronavirus disease (COVID-19), sentiments surrounding COVID-19 have evolved rapidly. This study aimed to examine worldwide trends of four emotions—fear, anger, sadness, and joy—and the narratives underlying those emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020	Social media behaviours during COVID-19 Ongoing By Edson C. Tandoc Jr. Funded by: Social Science Research Council and Ministry of Education Tier 1 Grant Social media platforms have facilitated the easy and quick spread of information. This is particularly true in Singapore, a country ranked among those with highest rates of social media use. However, social media is not only used for information, but also for self-expression and collective coping, and such uses become more salient during crises (Takahashi et al., 2015; Tandoc and Takahashi, 2016). This study explores how Singapore residents used social media for different types of uses and what factors affect such usage patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020	Effects of COVID-19 Misinformation on Information Seeking, Avoidance and Processing: A multicountry Comparative Study Published By Kim Hye Kyung, Jisoo Ahn, Lucy Atkinson and Lee Ann Kahlor We examined the implications of exposure to misinformation about COVID-19 in the United States, South Korea, and Singapore in the early stages of the global pandemic. The online survey results showed that misinformation exposure reduced information insufficiency, which subsequently led to greater information avoidance and heuristic processing, as well as less systematic processing of COVID-19 information. Indirect effects differ by country and were stronger in the U.S. sample than in the Singapore sample. This study highlights negative consequences of misinformation during a global pandemic and addresses possible cultural and situational differences in how people interpret and respond to misinformation.
2020	Investigating the link between information behaviour and belief in fake news during the COVID-19 pandemic Under review By Edson C. Tandoc Jr. and Kim Hye Kyung Funded by: WhatsApp Research Award and Ministry of Education Tier 1 Grant Using a two-wave panel survey (N₁ = 827; N₂ = 767) conducted in Singapore in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study explores the link between how individuals respond to information about COVID-19 and how susceptible they are to being misinformed. Mechanisms that explain such link, such as information overload, are also explored.
2020	Information behavior and feelings of uncertainty during the COVID-19 Outbreak Under Review By Edson C. Tandoc Jr. and James Chong Boi Lee Funded by: WhatsApp Research Award This project examines how young adults in Singapore managed uncertainty around the COVID-19 outbreak through information behavior, such as seeking information or avoiding it. It is based on interviews with more than 80 young adults in Singapore and documents the different ways these individuals navigated information about the outbreak, with many of them preferring to rely on information from messaging and news apps rather than traditional news.
2020	Promoting users’ intention to share online health articles on social media: The role of confirmation bias Published in Information Processing & Management (SJR-Q1, 2019 JCR IF: 4.787) By Zhao, Haiping (Wuhan University, China); Fu, Shaoxiong (Nanjing Agricultural University, China); Funded by: China Scholarship Council (CSC No. 201806270048); National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 71974149) Nowadays, it is a common practice for healthcare professionals to spread medical knowledge by posting health articles on social media. However, promoting users’ intention to share such articles is challenging because the extent of sharing intention varies in their eHealth literacy (high or low) and the content valence of the article that they are exposed to (positive or negative). This study investigates boundary conditions under which eHealth literacy and content valence help to increase users’ intention to share by introducing a moderating role of confirmation bias—a tendency to prefer information that conforms to their initial beliefs. A 2 (eHealth literacy: high vs. low) × 2 (content valence: positive vs. negative) between-subjects experiment was conducted in a sample of 80 participants. Levels of confirmation bias ranging from extreme negative bias to extreme positive bias among the participants were assessed during the experiment. Results suggested that: (1) users with a high level of eHealth literacy were more likely to share positive health articles when they had extreme confirmation bias; (2) users with a high level of eHealth literacy were more likely to share negative health articles when they had moderate confirmation bias or no confirmation bias; (3) users with a low level of eHealth literacy were more likely to share health articles regardless of positive or negative content valence when they had moderate positive confirmation bias. This study sheds new light on the role of confirmation bias in users’ health information sharing. Also, it offers implications for health information providers who want to increase the visibility of their online health articles: they need to consider readers’ eHealth literacy and confirmation bias when deciding the content valence of the articles.