Brief Informational Intervention for COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis

The primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process. Infographics are preferable to narratives or text because they center visuals as part of the storytelling process and facilitate cognitive information processing, knowledge absorption, and enhanced persuasion. The study's infographic design will follow best practices in health communication. The message will be simple and jargon free. Visuals will include individuals (scientists), charts, text, and numbers. Attention will be paid to images, color, frames, representation, and composition (e.g., how the elements in the infographic are organized to show their relationship to each other).

"The comparator in this study will be a control (placebo) infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style."