Important new findings about the connection between social media use and attitudes and behaviours around COVID-19. Misinformation on social media ➡️ misperceptions ➡️ lower social distancing and risk perception. 👀 #COVID19 #misinformation 
We asked 3 important questions about misinformation circulating on social media and life-saving behaviours and attitudes. 🧐 How prevalent? Does it contribute to misperceptions? And does it affect behaviour? 🤔
We collected a ton of data to do it. Millions of tweets + thousands of articles + a nationally representative survey of Canadians. 🇨🇦
Not surprisingly, we find more misinformation (bat soup, vitamin-c, no worse than the flu, and conspiracy theories) on social media and less on news media.
Canadians who regularly consume social media have more misperceptions about COVID-19. Those that consume more traditional media have less. 👏📺
Those who have misperceptions (often from social media consumption) are less likely to social distance and less likely to perceive COVID-19 as a threat. 🔎
Repeat exposure to misinformation may lead to doubt in good information and belief in bad. This in turn can change behaviour and lead to lower compliance with COVID-19 public health directives. 😷⬅️➡️🤒
Our public sphere is polluted with misinformation. We can show that this pollution changes behaviour. This makes it even more important for policy makers and platform companies to treat it as the public health threat that it is. #COVID19 🦠 osf.io/6tcdn/
Look for more great work coming from the @MediaEcosystem Observatory team! 👏🔎 @AengusBridgman @EricMerkley @PeejLoewen @derekruths @taylor_owen @ozhilin1 @echdt
