“I THINK I WAS MISINFORMED”: UNDERSTANDING GHANAIAN MOTHERS’ PERSPECTIVES ON, AND EXPERIENCES WITH, MATERNAL HEALTH MISINFORMATION

Abstract

Many women in sub-Saharan Africa have died because of unmet maternal health information needs (Mulauzi & Daka, 2018). Existing research has established that access to, and use of, accurate maternal health information can optimize maternal health (Mwangakala, 2016). To the contrary, the reliance on, and use of, inaccurate information can result in susceptibility to maternal health complications (Arzoaquoi et al., 2015). Despite the negative impact of maternal health misinformation on mothers’ maternal health behaviors, it has not received substantial scholarly attention, including in the areas of health communication and public relations. Given the scarcity of studies in these areas, this dissertation utilized the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) and the culture-centered approach (CCA) to investigate how Ghanaian mothers understand, relate to, and experience maternal health misinformation. Specifically, the study posed four research questions based on the independent variables of the STOPS. These questions examined (1) How the mothers identified maternal health misinformation, (2) The extent of their involvement with misinformation, (3) The challenges they encountered when attempting to correct misinformation, and (4) How their prior experiences with, and knowledge of, pregnancy, birth and postpartum enabled them to unpack misinformation. The women who participated in this study were mothers who had either experienced pregnancy, birth, and postpartum in Ghana with children five years or younger or were pregnant. Twenty of these mothers were purposively sampled and participated in semi-structured interviews via WhatsApp voice calls and chat. The findings demonstrate the applicability of STOPS to health communication and to a different sociocultural environment. The study revealed that the participants’ high problem and involvement recognition coupled with low constraint recognition shaped their information acquisition, selection, and transmission. The study also showed that referent criterion significantly shaped problem recognition. Additionally, the study demonstrated how the constructs of the CCA, namely culture, structure, and agency, intersected with the independent variables of the STOPS to inform the mothers’ communicative action. Specifically, it showed how the participants’ culture shaped their problem and constraint recognition, how the mothers’ agency shaped their involvement recognition and enhanced problem-solving, and how structure shaped problem recognition and referent criterion. The study concludes that maternal health interventions targeted at curbing misinformation must be culture centered. Also, the STOPS should be used in segmenting maternal health publics. This approach will help leverage the agency of active mothers for social correction of misinformation.