The influence of mass media on the formation of attitudes towards the disease with COVID-19

Relevance. To date, mass media, especially the internet, stands as the primary tool for informing, enlightening, educating, and entertaining the overwhelming majority of individuals. Media coverage, particularly on the internet, carries a “psychogenic” potential akin to that of a treating physician, especially in its publications regarding potential threats to human life and health. The immediacy of the internet, social networks, and mass media played a crucial role in transforming the COVID-19 pandemic into an extreme situation. Authors of media publications emphatically asserted the fatal nature of the new infection, the immediate threat to human life and health, thereby shaping dominants that contributed to aberrations in the perception of reality. Certainly, such information influenced people’s attitudes toward the emerging situation, shaping their perceptions of risk, motivation for daily behavior, and emotional background. This attitude could not help but manifest itself in the event of illness.

The aim is to study the features of the formation of attitudes towards the disease during COVID-19 with the iatrogenic impact of mass media on the psyche of patients.

Methodology. The study took place on the basis of St. Petersburg City Hospital No. 15, Russian State Pedagogical University named after. A. I. Herzen and using the Internet resource docs.google.com/forms. A total of 120 individuals, aged 16 to 65, were examined using the clinical-psychological method. Diagnosis of the attitude towards the disease was carried out using the TOBOL technique. To specify socio-demographic characteristics and respondents’ attitudes toward COVID-19, a questionnaire “Attitude to Coronavirus” was developed. The analysis of empirical data was performed using descriptive statistics and methods of mathematical-statistical data processing.

Results and their analysis. It has been established that the media have an iatrogenic effect on the formation of attitudes towards the disease during COVID-19.

Conclusion. The results obtained can be used to develop and plan psychoprophylactic measures in the system of anti-epidemic measures.

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