@文章{信息:doi/10.2196/28975，作者=“Akpan, Ikpe Justice和Aguolu, Obianuju Genevieve和Kobara, Yawo Mamoua和Razavi, Rouzbeh和Akpan, Asuama A和Shanker, Murali”，标题=“人们使用网络搜索了解COVID-19与他们对公共卫生指南的行为之间的关联:经验信息流行病学研究”，期刊=“J Med Internet Res”，年=“2021”，月=“Sep”，日=“2”，卷=“23”，数=“9”，页=“e28975”，关键词=“互联网;新型冠状病毒;SARS-CoV-2;COVID-19;infodemiology;错误信息;阴谋论;背景:在这个数字时代，使用互联网和基于网络的平台来获取公共卫生信息和管理与健康有关的问题已经变得普遍。这种做法非常普遍，以至于获得健康信息的第一反应是“谷歌”。随着2019年12月SARS-CoV-2在中国武汉爆发并迅速蔓延到全球，人们纷纷上网了解这种新型冠状病毒和疾病COVID-19。 Lagging responses by governments and public health agencies to prioritize the dissemination of information about the coronavirus outbreak through the internet and the World Wide Web and to build trust gave room for others to quickly populate social media, online blogs, news outlets, and websites with misinformation and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in people's deviant behaviors toward public health safety measures. Objective: The goals of this study were to determine what people learned about the COVID-19 pandemic through web searches, examine any association between what people learned about COVID-19 and behavior toward public health guidelines, and analyze the impact of misinformation and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic on people's behavior toward public health measures. Methods: This infodemiology study used Google Trends' worldwide search index, covering the first 6 months after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak (January 1 to June 30, 2020) when the public scrambled for information about the pandemic. Data analysis employed statistical trends, correlation and regression, principal component analysis (PCA), and predictive models. Results: The PCA identified two latent variables comprising past coronavirus epidemics (pastCoVepidemics: keywords that address previous epidemics) and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (presCoVpandemic: keywords that explain the ongoing pandemic). Both principal components were used significantly to learn about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 and explained 88.78{\%} of the variability. Three principal components fuelled misinformation about COVID-19: misinformation (keywords ``biological weapon,'' ``virus hoax,'' ``common cold,'' ``COVID-19 hoax,'' and ``China virus''), conspiracy theory 1 (ConspTheory1; keyword ``5G'' or ``@5G''), and conspiracy theory 2 (ConspTheory2; keyword ``ingest bleach''). These principal components explained 84.85{\%} of the variability. The principal components represent two measurements of public health safety guidelines---public health measures 1 (PubHealthMes1; keywords ``social distancing,'' ``wash hands,'' ``isolation,'' and ``quarantine'') and public health measures 2 (PubHealthMes2; keyword ``wear mask'')---which explained 84.7{\%} of the variability. Based on the PCA results and the log-linear and predictive models, ConspTheory1 (keyword ``@5G'') was identified as a predictor of people's behavior toward public health measures (PubHealthMes2). Although correlations of misinformation (keywords ``COVID-19,'' ``hoax,'' ``virus hoax,'' ``common cold,'' and more) and ConspTheory2 (keyword ``ingest bleach'') with PubHealthMes1 (keywords ``social distancing,'' ``hand wash,'' ``isolation,'' and more) were r=0.83 and r=--0.11, respectively, neither was statistically significant (P=.27 and P=.13, respectively). Conclusions: Several studies focused on the impacts of social media and related platforms on the spreading of misinformation and conspiracy theories. This study provides the first empirical evidence to the mainly anecdotal discourse on the use of web searches to learn about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. ", issn="1438-8871", doi="10.2196/28975", url="//www.mybigtv.com/2021/9/e28975", url="https://doi.org/10.2196/28975", url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34280117" }