研究：总刷社交媒体 容易相信“新冠假消息”

新冠肺炎疫情期间，不少人把社交媒体作为主要信息 People cross a street during morning peak hour commute amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Singapore June 3, 2020. [Photo/Agencies]

People who rely on social media for information about coronavirus are more likely to believe conspiracy theories and go outside with symptoms or breach lockdown rules, a new study revealed.

一项最新研究显示，把社交媒体作为新冠肺炎疫情主要信息 Research published by the Psychological Medicine journal found that 60 percent of people who believe that Covid-19 was directly linked to the world's growing 5G network used YouTube as their primary source of news.

研究发现，认为新冠肺炎与全球不断增加的5G网络直接相关的人中，有60%将YouTube作为主要资讯 And those who preferred Facebook to get their information 54 percent believed the 5G conspiracy theory compared to 20 percent who did not and 26 percent who were not sure.

而喜欢在脸书上获取信息的人中，54%的人相信5G阴谋论，20%的人不相信，26%的人不确定。

The 5G link to coronavirus has been widely debunked by Governments and tech experts. Yet people have been damaging masts or even setting fire to them while phone and broadband engineers have been harrassed and threatened leading to public information campaigns in some countries.

多国政府和技术专家都反驳了5G与新冠病毒有关这一谣言。然而，在一些国家，人们一直在破坏甚至纵火焚烧5G基站，电话和宽带工程师受到骚扰和威胁也导致了公共信息宣传活动的举行。

debunk[diːˈbʌŋk]：vt.揭穿；拆穿…的假面具；暴露

The new study also found:

新的研究还发现：

58% of those who have gone outside with Covid-19 symptoms use YouTube as a main information source, compared with 16% of those who haven’t;

在有新冠肺炎症状但仍外出的人中，有58%将YouTube作为主要信息 56% of people who believe there's no hard evidence Covid-19 exists use Facebook as a key information source, almost three times higher than the proportion of non-believers who do (20%)

认为没有确凿证据证明新冠肺炎存在的人中，有56%将脸书作为主要信息 28% of those who believe that death figures have been deliberately exaggerated by the authorities have broken lockdown rules. 18% of believers have gone to work or outside with coronavirus symptoms, almost four times more than the 5% of non-believers.

那些认为死亡数字被政府故意夸大的人中，有28%的人违反了封锁规定；持这种观点的人中有18%曾在出现新冠肺炎症状后去工作或外出，几乎是不相信这一观点的人的4倍 More than one in 20 (8%) think the symptoms that most individuals blame on Covid-19 appear to be connected to 5G network radiation - a false conspiracy that is thought to have motivated a number of mobile mast attacks across the country during lockdown.

超过二十分之一 Of those who believe this theory, 60% said they get their information from YouTube, compared with 14% who think that it is false.

在相信这一阴谋论的人中，60%的人说他们从YouTube上获取信息，相比之下在不相信这一阴谋论的人中，只有14%的人从YouTube上获取信息。

Among those who believe there is no hard evidence that the virus exists, 56% use Facebook as their key information source, almost three times higher than the proportion of people who do not believe such a thing (20%).

在那些认为没有确凿证据表明病毒存在的人中，56%的人将脸书作为主要信息 The findings, based on surveys of 2,254 UK residents aged between 16 and 75 carried out by King's College London and Ipsos Mori, also suggest a link between those who have broken lockdown rules and use social media for details about coronavirus as well.

上述调查结果 Three in 10 people who wrongly believe that 5G is causing Covid-19 symptoms have gone outside despite suspecting they may have the virus, compared with just 4% among those who reject this belief.

错误地认为5G会导致新冠肺炎症状的人中，有30%的人曾在怀疑自己可能感染了病毒后外出，而在不相信这种观点的人中，这一比例仅为4%。

'Our findings suggest that social media use is linked both to false beliefs about Covid-19 and to failure to follow the clear-cut rules of the lockdown,' said Dr Daniel Allington, senior lecturer in social and cultural artificial intelligence at King's College London.

伦敦国王学院社会与文化人工智能高级讲师丹尼尔•阿林顿博士说：“我们的研究结果表明，社交媒体的使用既与人们对新冠肺炎的错误认识有关，也与不遵守明确的封锁规定有关。”

clear-cut [ˌklɪə ˈkʌt]：adj.清晰的

'This is not surprising, given that so much of the information on social media is misleading or downright wrong.

“这并不奇怪，因为社交媒体上的很多信息都是误导性的，或者是完全错误的。”

'Now that some of the lockdown rules are being relaxed, people will have to make more and more of their own decisions about what is safe or unsafe - which means that access to good-quality information about Covid-19 will be more important than ever.

“现在一些封锁规定正在放松，人们就得自己决定什么是安全的，什么是不安全的——这意味着获得关于新冠肺炎的高质量信息将比以往任何时候都更加重要。”