Fear-inducing COVID-19 desensitization to health news on Twitter: an observational study

Stevens HR, Oh YJ, Taylor LD to fear-inducing COVID-19

Desensitization to Twitter health news: an observational study

JMIR Infodemiology 2021; 1(1): e26876

doi: 10.2196 / 26876

Commentary

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of fear-inducing news articles on people's expression of anxiety on Twitter. In addition, it had the secondary purpose of investigating desensitization to fear-inducing health news over time, despite the steady increase in COVID-19 deaths.

The study examined anxiety levels of news articles (n = 1465) and corresponding user tweets containing "COVID," "COVID-19," "pandemic," and "coronavirus" over an 11-month period.

The results showed that tweets that shared links to whole unsettling articles were more likely to make people anxious. However, they also showed that users' tweet anxiety rose rapidly with articles when the number of deaths was low, and then declined in the third quartile of deaths.

As predicted, an increase in the number of deaths coincided with a decrease in the level of article anxiety, and the extent to which article anxiety triggered user tweet anxiety decreased when the number of deaths reached the second quartile.

In conclusion, 

we observed a sharp increase in the level of anxiety in users' tweets in response to article anxiety early in the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the number of casualties increased, news articles seemed to lose their ability to elicit anxiety among readers.

Desensitization provides an explanation for why the increase in threats has not triggered widespread behavioral compliance with guidance from public health officials.

In summary, 

the tweets confirmed the trend that as the number of deaths increased, the tendency to become duller in terms of anxiety and other concerns.