Desensitization to Fear-Inducing COVID-19 Health News on Twitter: Observational Study

BACKGROUND: As of May 9, 2021, the United States had 32.7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 (20.7% of confirmed cases worldwide) and 580,000 deaths (17.7% of deaths worldwide). Early on in the pandemic, widespread social, financial, and mental insecurities led to extreme and irrational coping behaviors, such as panic buying. However, despite the consistent spread of COVID-19 transmission, the public began to violate public safety measures as the pandemic got worse. OBJECTIVE: In this work, we examine the effect of fear-inducing news articles on people’s expression of anxiety on Twitter. Additionally, we investigate desensitization to fear-inducing health news over time, despite the steadily rising COVID-19 death toll. METHODS: This study examined the anxiety levels in news articles (n=1465) and corresponding user tweets containing “COVID,” “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” and “coronavirus” over 11 months, then correlated that information with the death toll of COVID-19 in the United States. RESULTS: Overall, tweets that shared links to anxious articles were more likely to be anxious (odds ratio [OR] 2.65, 95% CI 1.58-4.43, P<.001). These odds decreased (OR 0.41, 95% CI 0.2-0.83, P=.01) when the death toll reached the third quartile and fourth quartile (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.21-0.85, P=.01). However, user tweet anxiety rose rapidly with articles when the death toll was low and then decreased in the third quartile of deaths (OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.37-1.01, P=.06). As predicted, in addition to the increasing death toll being matched by a lower level of article anxiety, the extent to which article anxiety elicited user tweet anxiety decreased when the death count reached the second quartile. CONCLUSIONS: The level of anxiety in users’ tweets increased sharply in response to article anxiety early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the casualty count climbed, news articles seemingly lost their ability to elicit anxiety among readers. Desensitization offers an explanation for why the increased threat is not eliciting widespread behavioral compliance with guidance from public health officials. This work investigated how individuals' emotional reactions to news of the COVID-19 pandemic manifest as the death toll increases. Findings suggest individuals became desensitized to the increased COVID-19 threat and their emotional responses were blunted over time.