The impact of misinformation and fake news in cyberspace on public health during health crises

The presented bachelor thesis deals with the issue of misinformation and fake news in cyberspace and their impact on public health during health crises. In an era of online environments' increasing importance and involvement in our daily lives, misinformation poses a significant threat. This paper provides a detailed look at selected factors that make cyberspace a suitable environment for the spread of misinformation, such as anonymity, speed and reach, echo chambers and filter bubbles, algorithm manipulation, and complex misinformation campaigns, including an analysis of selected psychological factors that involve corrective sense-making, intuitive thinking, cognitive failures, social and affective factors, health anxiety, pre-existing misinformation beliefs and repeated exposure, and last but not least, an analysis of socio-demographic factors affecting trust in misinformation such as education, income, age, political orientation and geographic location. Furthermore, it examined the impact of misinformation during two specific health crises, the Ebola epidemic in African countries and the global Covid-19 pandemic. In the practical part, a questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the riskiest behavioural patterns in questions representing psychological factors and the most used media for information acquisition. The questionnaire survey found that respondents showed the riskiest behaviours in the question, representing repeated exposure and the most frequent use of internet sources for obtaining information. The main methodological approaches include qualitative analysis, comparative methods, and questionnaire surveys.