Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Library and Information Science (LIS) students’ understanding of infodemic and related terminologies and their ability to categorize COVID-19-related problematic information types using examples from social media platforms.

Design/methodology/approach

The participants of this study were LIS students from a public-funded university located at the south coast of Bangladesh. An online survey was conducted which, in addition to demographic and study information, asked students to identify the correct definition of infodemic and related terminologies and to categorize the COVID-related problematic social media posts based on their inherent problem characteristics. The correct answer for each definition and task question was assigned a score of “1”, whereas the wrong answer was coded as “0”. The percentages of correctness score for total and each category of definition and task-specific questions were computed. The independent sample t-test and ANOVA were run to examine the differences in total and category-specific scores between student groups.

Findings

The findings revealed that students’ knowledge concerning the definition of infodemic and related terminologies and the categorization of COVID-19-related problematic social media posts was poor. There was no significant difference in correctness scores between student groups in terms of gender, age and study levels.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time an effort was made to understand LIS students’ recognition and classification of problematic information. The findings can assist LIS departments in revising and improving the existing information literacy curriculum for students.

中文翻译：

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围绕 COVID-19 的信息流行病：LIS 学生能否识别和分类社交媒体上的“有问题的信息”类型？

目的

本文的目的是调查图书馆和信息科学 (LIS) 学生对信息流行病和相关术语的理解，以及他们使用社交媒体平台的示例对 COVID-19 相关问题信息类型进行分类的能力。

设计/方法/方法

本研究的参与者是来自孟加拉国南海岸一所公立大学的 LIS 学生。除了人口统计和学习信息外，还进行了一项在线调查，要求学生确定信息流行病和相关术语的正确定义，并根据其固有的问题特征对与 COVID 相关的有问题的社交媒体帖子进行分类。每个定义和任务问题的正确答案得分为“1”，而错误答案的得分为“0”。计算了总和每个类别的定义和任务特定问题的正确性得分百分比。运行独立样本t检验和 ANOVA 以检查学生组之间总分和特定类别分数的差异。

发现

调查结果表明，学生对信息流行病和相关术语的定义以及与 COVID-19 相关的有问题的社交媒体帖子的分类的知识很差。在性别、年龄和学习水平方面，学生组之间的正确性分数没有显着差异。

原创性/价值

据作者所知，这是第一次努力了解 LIS 学生对问题信息的识别和分类。研究结果可以帮助 LIS 部门修改和改进现有的学生信息素养课程。