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Access to accurate and up-to-date information is essential for individual and collective decision making, especially at times of emergency. On February 26, 2020, two weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the COVID-19’s emergency a “pandemic,” we systematically collected and analyzed search results for the term “coronavirus” in three languages from six search engines. We

As conspiracy theories about COVID-19 take root in the United States, understanding the psychological foundations of conspiracy beliefs is increasingly critical. Our research shows that beliefs in two popular variants of COVID-19 conspiracy theory are the joint product of the psychological predispositions 1) to reject information coming from experts and other authority figures and 2) to view major events as the product of conspiracies, as well as partisan and ideological motivations.

This paper discusses patterns of public health misinformation observed during infectious disease epidemics. Specifically, we group epidemic-related misinformation into four categories: transmission, prevention, treatment, and vaccination. By developing tools, algorithms, and other resources around these categories, institutions, companies, and individuals can proactively limit and counter the spread of misinformation and its potential negative health effects. 

A US national probability-based survey during the early days of the SARS-CoV-2 spread in the US showed that, above and beyond respondents’ political party, mainstream broadcast media use (e.g., NBC News) correlated with accurate information about the disease’s lethality, and mainstream print media use (e.g.,

With over 30,000 confirmed cases, Brazil is currently the country most affected by COVID-19 in Latin America, and ranked 12th worldwide (John Hopkins University & Medicine, 2020). Despite all evidence, a strong rhetoric undermining risks associated to COVID-19 has been endorsed at the highest levels of the Brazilian government, making President Jair Bolsonaro the leader of the “coronavirus-denial movement” (Friedman, 2020.