Funding Agency: Start-Up Grant, Nanyang Technological University
Funding Quantum: SGD $35,000
Duration of Award: August 2022 to August 2023
Role: Principal Investigator
What the project is about:
At the start of 2020, COVID-19 became the most urgent threat to global public health. In addition to the millions of lives claimed and the economic fallout, governments and public health agencies need to deal with the abuse and weaponization of digital health technologies—such as social media platforms—that were used to spread misinformation, as well as face public resistance in implementation of digital health solutions to curb COVID-19.
This study aims to address two broad research questions in the use of digital health technologies within COVID19 context. First, it aims to examine what roles did digital health technologies play in promoting information, misinformation and disinformation on COVID-19. Second, it aims to examine the impact of exposure to information on COVID-19 and related topics on public knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Finally, it aims to understand the underlying motivations and barriers of the public in adopting or resisting digital health technologies in combatting COVID19. The research questions would be addressed through a combination of traditional social scientific (e.g., in-depth interviews, surveys) and computational approaches (e.g., social media and smartphone mining, machine learning) via three distinct work packages.
Edmund W. J. Lee 