| Summary: | Introduction
During the COVID-19 pandemic, various types of disinformation have
emerged from the media. This study focuses on the online disinformation about
tobacco and the COVID-19 on the Sina Weibo, the Chinese largest new media
microblog platform.
Material and Methods
The related posts from the beginning of the epidemic in December 2019
to 19 January 2021 were searched. Text mining technology was applied on
these posts to identify content on ‘smoking can prevent COVID-19’. Descriptive
research was used to analyze the dataset.
Results
Among the 912 original posts, 508 informative posts were selected after
artificial recognition, including 112 posts of spreading disinformation and 396
which dispel the disinformation. Of the disinformation posts, 74% (83/112) cited
the results of scientific research, and 17% (19/112) mentioned that smog from
burning Asian wormwood could prevent COVID-19. By analyzing the public’s
comments on these 112 disinformation posts, it was suggested that about 12% of
the comments were in support, and 88% of the posts were opposed or invalid. The
proportion of supportive comments on pseudo-scientific information was higher
than on plain disinformation, 21% and 9%, respectively.
Conclusions
The disinformation of promoting smoking as a way to prevent
COVID-19 has the typical feature of using pseudo-scientific arguments to package
disinformation, making it very difficult for readers without professional knowledge
to identify. Such actions harm both tobacco control and COVID-19 prevention.
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