Online news consumption about COVID-19 pandemic a snapshot from Vietnam

Abstract

Misleading and fake news surroundings COVID-19 crisis cause confusion and risk-taking actions that can harm public and society wellbeing. Research on media effect on news consumption has soon attracted high scholarly interest. However, the majority of existing studies were Western-dominated and conducted in the early stages of the pandemic. Aiming to address these gaps, this paper probes into news consumption about COVID-19 in the 4th wave of Vietnam. Results show that internet-based websites (exclude online newspapers) were most-used by correspondents for news about the health pandemic. However, the internet users were less frequently to access news than online newspapers readers. Vietnamese public paid a huge attention to the COVID-19 situation whereas they diverged their interests in other pandemic information, i.e governmental policies, vaccine issues and scientific knowledge about Coronavirus. Despite their prime reliance on websites and other internet channels for COVID-19 updates, people did not trust them as a credible source of heath risks.