Prevalence and Perception Among Saudi Arabian Population About Resharing of Information on Social Media Regarding Natural Remedies as Protective Measures Against COVID-19

Maram Alshareef; Amna Alotiby

doi:10.2147/IJGM.S326767

Prevalence and Perception Among Saudi Arabian Population About Resharing of Information on Social Media Regarding Natural Remedies as Protective Measures Against COVID-19

Int J Gen Med. 2021 Sep 1:14:5127-5137. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S326767. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Maram Alshareef¹, Amna Alotiby²

Affiliations

¹ Family and Pain Medicine, Department of Community Medicine and Pilgrims Health, Faculty of Medicine, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia.
² Molecular and Medical Immunology, Department of Hematology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Introduction: Ever since COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic, there has been a prevalence of misinformation circulating online on social media platforms. In order to better tackle COVID-19 it is important to determine how the general population perceive the sharing of medical information on social media platforms. Based on this, the aim of the study is to analyse the perception of Saudi Arabian Health Care Workers' (HCWs) and Non-Health Care Workers' (NHCWs) regarding the sharing and resharing of medical information, whether true or false, on social media platforms regarding COVID-19.

Methods: To achieve the aim of this study, the general objective is to identify the most commonly used Social Media Platforms, determine the proportion of the Saudi Arabian population who have participated in recirculating information in those social media platforms, and to analyse their perception of medical information sharing in social media platforms. This study was conducted using a quantitative research methodology. The measurement tool used for this study was an online survey conducted using Google Survey. A 10-item questionnaire was adopted and translated to Arabic to conduct the survey.

Results: The total number of responses for the study were N=1249. The findings of the study indicate that Saudi Arabian general population understand the prevalence of unverified information, but are accepting of the practice of sharing information without evidence on social media platforms, with the belief that such information does not cause actual harm to the general public, but instead would be beneficial. WhatsApp was the most preferred social media platform for receiving and sharing information among participants, followed by Twitter and Snapchat.

Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that the Saudi Arabian population are more wary than the global general population regarding misinformation online on social media platforms regarding COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Saudi Arabian population; infodemic; misinformation; sharing information.

Grants and funding

The author declares that no funds were received to conduct this research.