May 3, 2021 – Belief in conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic increased through the early months of the U.S. outbreak among people who reported being heavy users of conservative and social media, a study by Annenberg Public Policy Center researchers has found.
Prior APPC research found that people who regularly used conservative or social media during the early months of the pandemic were more likely to report believing in a group of COVID-19 conspiracies. The current study expands on that, finding that a reliance on conservative or social media actually predicted an increase in conspiracy beliefs from March to July 2020.
From March to July 2020, for example, the share of conservative media users who reported believing that the Chinese government created the coronavirus as a bioweapon rose from 52% to 66%. Conservative media included sources such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart News, One America News, and the Drudge Report.
Further, these increases in conspiracy beliefs were associated with less mask wearing and decreased intentions to get a vaccine when it became available, according to the study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
“The media played a role in the promotion or reduction of conspiracy beliefs,” said Dan Romer, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, who co-authored the study with APPC Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson. “There were media sources that hindered the ability of the country to confront the pandemic.”
Although some social media platforms said they downgraded or removed false or misleading content about the pandemic, the ongoing use of social media was also correlated with an increased belief in COVID-19 conspiracies.
“The major social media platforms are playing Whac-A-Mole with COVID conspiracy purveyors,” Jamieson said. “Block their imaginings in one place and they reappear in another.”
A Chinese bioweapon and other COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs
The researchers conducted an Annenberg Science Knowledge (ASK) survey using a national U.S. probability sample in March 2020 and again in July 2020 with the same group of 840 adults. The respondents were asked about three conspiracy beliefs, media use, steps taken to prevent the spread of the virus, and their intentions to be vaccinated, among other things.
In July, the researchers found these levels of overall acceptance of the conspiracy beliefs, with the overall sample rating them either “definitely true” or “probably true”:
17% of U.S. adults reported believing that “the pharmaceutical industry created the coronavirus to increase sales of its drugs and vaccines,” up from 15% in March;
32% reported believing that some in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “are exaggerating the danger posed by the coronavirus to damage the Trump presidency,” up from 24% in March; and
38% reported believing that “the coronavirus was created by the Chinese government as a biological weapon,” up from 28% in March.
0 Comments