Expectancy Violation and COVID-19 Misinformation: A Comment on Bogomoletc and Lee's “Frozen Meat Against COVID-19 Misinformation: An Analysis of Steak-umm and Positive Expectancy Violations”

• Published in: Journal of business and technical communication Vol. 35; no. 4; pp. 496 - 504
• Main Author: Agley, Jon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-10-2021; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Coronaviruses; COVID-19; False information; COVID-19; Steak-umm; misinformation; public health; expectancy violation
• ISSN: 1050-6519; 1552-4574
• DOI: 10.1177/10506519211021614

The social media account for Steak-umm, a frozen food product, achieved notoriety in 2020 for its messages about how to evaluate the quality of information. Bogomoletc and Lee proposed that the positive reaction to these messages being posted by a brand account resulted from expectancy violations and verified their idea with an analysis of 1,000 randomly selected tweets responding to Steak-umm's tweets. This comment responds to their work from a public health perspective and asks whether the expectancies that were violated were also those of nonscientists in general, allowing the tweets to serve as relief amidst a cavalcade of misinformation about COVID-19.