Social media users' seeking for health information and their awareness of the differences between misnformation, disinformation, and malinformation

The current study aims to achieve a primary objective, which is to identify the extent to which social media users are exposed to health information, specifically that related to the presence of a variant of the Corona virus XEC, in light of the information epidemic. A number of sub-objectives emerge from the primary objective, which are: measuring the public's awareness of the differences between disinformation, mal-information and misinformation; identifying the challenges facing medical/health media in Egypt from the perspective of communicators in newspaper institutions and electronic websites; analyzing the opinions of communicators specialized in health and medical affairs regarding the public's awareness of the differences between disinformation , mal-information and misinformation. The theoretical framework of the study is represented by the theory of information seeking, in addition to the model of Audience Act Of Authentication. This study is a descriptive study that aims to study a specific phenomenon, to study this phenomenon, the study relies on a survey approach. The researcher applied a questionnaire tool on a sample of Egyptian public, numbering 400 individuals, in addition to conducting ten field interviews with the communicator. The results confirmed that it was shown Regarding the rate of seeking health information on social networking sites, 53.5% of the sample seek information on social networking sites sometimes, followed by always at 29.57%, and finally rarely at 16.75%. Regarding trust in health information provided by social networking sites, 58.75% trust the information provided by social networking sites to some extent, followed by those who trust it greatly at 21.5%, and finally those who do not trust it at 19.75%. It was also found that the most significant challenge facing scientific or medical communicators is the extreme slowness in responding to disseminated information, along with difficulties in dealing with journalistic sources, and the public's lack of trust in newspapers and websites. It was also found that communicators believe the public trusts social media news related to medical or health topics, even though it may cause confusion and panic among the public.