The Effect of Social Media on Spreading Fear and Panic During COVID-19 Pandemic in Sri Lanka

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue V, May 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

The Effect of Social Media on Spreading Fear and Panic During COVID-19 Pandemic in Sri Lanka

D. A. Akuratiya
Department of Accountancy, ATI-Dehiwala, SLIATE, Sri Lanka

Abstract: People around the world have been directly and indirectly affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its spread has heavily impacted global health and mental health. The rapid spread, uncertainty, and high death rates due to the corona pandemic created huge fear and panic all over the world. With physical isolation, people heavily rely on social media to seek information regarding this pandemic. This paper presents how social media affected on spreading of fear and panic during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka. An online questionnaire (Google Form) was prepared and conducted with a sample of 102 participants from the Western province in Sri Lanka. Correspondently, data were analyzed using SPSS software. The study reveals that social media has a significant impact on spreading fear and panic related to the COVID-19 outbreak in Sri Lanka, with a potential negative influence on people’s mental health and physical well-being. Facebook is the most used social media network for spreading fear and panic about the COVID-19 outbreak in Sri Lanka. In conclusion, can say that social media has played a crucial role in creating and spreading fear and panic about the COVID-19 outbreak in Sri Lanka.

Keywords: Social media, Fear and panic, COVID-19

I.INTRODUCTION

The outbreak of pneumonia of unknown reason was first identified in December 2019 from Wuhan, China. The WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 30th January, renamed the disease as COVID-19 on 11th February, and a pandemic on 11th March 2020 (Liu & Liu, 2020). More than 109.4 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported from more than 217+ countries with more than 2.4 million deaths, and 81.5 million recoveries as of February 2021 (worldometers.info). COVID-19 has been considered by the WHO as a severe acute respiratory disease (Torales et al., 2020). The new coronavirus initially named 2019-nCoV is the seventh member of the coronaviruses’ family that infects humans,

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