Drivers of the Virality of COVID‐19 Misinformation Sharing on Social Media

ABSTRACT During global health crises, identifying the key factors of the misinformation dissemination process on social media can provide decision support for public health management. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study characterizes the effects of content types and social capital of social media users on the virality of misinformation related to the COVID‐19 pandemic. We used scale, depth, and width to quantify the extent and structure of the virality of misinformation spreading on social media. The findings reveal that both the social capital of users and the content types have major influences on the dissemination of misinformation. Surprisingly, we discovered that the number of followers a user possesses has a varied influence on the dissemination scale, width, and depth, demonstrating the importance of considering dissemination structure.