What Factors Affect Adherence to COVID-19 Misinformation?

Adherence to misinformation has been a rising issue throughout the past couple of years, and COVID-19 is the best opportunity at the moment to try and make the possible factors affecting it quantifiable. My research project revolves around the relationship between adherence to COVID-19 misinformation and other influences within one’s life. These factors include socioeconomic status, age, political orientation, exposure to COVID-19 (either of oneself or a loved one), and area of residence (urban or rural). I will distribute a survey that 1) screens the reader on these factors and 2) asks the reader multiple-choice questions assessing their adherence to COVID-19 misinformation, their answers to which will then be used to convert their adherence to misinformation into a numerical score. These results could give us as a country a whole new understanding of misinformation as a phenomenon, thereby giving us necessary tools to combat it in the modern age. Does a higher socioeconomic status mean that one is likely to be better educated, or are the rich instead disconnected from the lives of the common folk? Are the youth more discerning of misinformation or are they the most vulnerable to it? How does personal experience affect one’s view on the given subject matter? This survey can help answer all of these questions and more, and this is important because we can’t expect to solve a problem such as the spread of misinformation without first understanding what makes it tick.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1123/thumbnail.jp