Association between social media collective empowerment and young adults’ interactive responses to health misinformation

Previous studies rarely examined which social media groups can empower citizens to engage in positive discussions of infectious public diseases, and whether their sense of collective empowerment corresponds with the detection of misinformation and subsequent responses toward public health issues. This study thus investigates whether collective empowerment of social media for health practices may increase health-related misinformation detection, attitudes, willingness to reduce personal needs, descriptive norms, injunctive norms, and intention to follow healthy practices against social health issues among the young population. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 583 young residents in Vietnam based on purposive sampling to test the proposed hypotheses using path analysis. Social media collective empowerment was positively associated with misinformation detection. Moreover, misinformation detection shaped attitudes, willingness to reduce personal needs, and injunctive norms that were conducive to behavioral intentions for health practices. Misinformation detection also mediated the effect of social media collective empowerment on intentions for health practices. Persuasive messages from policymakers, authorities, health institutions, and social marketers can focus on reinforcing the attitudes toward behaviors a health campaign aims to promote, especially by emphasizing that their group(s) members are likely to practice these behaviors because they are aware of not following misinformation on social media.