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Engagement with misinformation on social media poses unprecedented threats tosocietal well-being, particularly during health crises when susceptibility tomisinformation is heightened in a multi-topic context. This paper focuses onthe COVID-19 pandemic and addresses a critical gap in understanding onlineengagement with multi-topic misinformation at two user levels: news sharers whoshare source news items on social media and post viewers who engage with onlinenews posts. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of 7273fact-checked source news claims related to COVID-19 and their associated postson X, through the lens of topic diversity and conspiracy theories. We find thatfalse news, particularly when accompanied by conspiracy theories, exhibitshigher topic diversity than true news. At the news sharer level, false news hasa longer lifetime and receives more posts on X than true news. Additionally,the integration of conspiracy theories is significantly associated with alonger lifetime for COVID-19 misinformation. However, topic diversity has nosignificant association with news sharer engagement in terms of news lifetimeand the number of posts. At the post viewer level, contrary to the news sharerlevel, news posts characterized by heightened topic diversity receive morereposts, likes, and replies. Notably, post viewers tend to engage more withmisinformation containing conspiracy narratives: false news posts that containconspiracy theories, on average, receive 40.8% more reposts, 45.2% more likes,and 44.1% more replies compared to false news posts without conspiracytheories. Our findings suggest that news sharers and post viewers exhibitdifferent engagement patterns on social media regarding topic diversity andconspiracy theories, offering valuable insights into designing targetedmisinformation intervention strategies at both user levels.

From News Sharers to Post Viewers: How Topic Diversity and Conspiracy Theories Shape Engagement With Misinformation During a Health Crisis?