Frontiers: The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Noncompliance with Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Simonov, Andrey; Sacher, Szymon; Dubé, Jean-Pierre; Biswas, Shirsho

doi:10.1287/mksc.2021.1328

Cited by 53 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Controlled behavioural experiments show that distorted information critically affects people's decision making such as the willingness to cooperate [43]. Recent field evidence finds that during the current COVID-19 crisis, higher exposure to Fox News reduces people's propensity to follow stay-at-home orders [44].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy

2022

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Vaccination hesitancy is a major obstacle to achieving and maintaining herd immunity. Therefore, public health authorities need to understand the dynamics of an anti-vaccine opinion in the population. We introduce a spatially structured mathematical model of opinion dynamics with reinforcement. The model allows as an emergent property for the occurrence of echo chambers, i.e. opinion bubbles in which information that is incompatible with one’s entrenched worldview, is probably disregarded. We scale the model both to a deterministic limit and to a weak-effects limit, and obtain bifurcations, phase transitions and the invariant measure. Fitting the model to measles and meningococci vaccination coverage across Germany, reveals that the emergence of echo chambers dynamics explains the occurrence and persistence of the anti-vaccination opinion in allowing anti-vaxxers to isolate and to ignore pro-vaccination facts. We predict and compare the effectiveness of different policies aimed at influencing opinion dynamics in order to increase vaccination uptake. According to our model, measures aiming at reducing the salience of partisan anti-vaccine information sources would have the largest effect on enhancing vaccination uptake. By contrast, measures aiming at reducing the reinforcement of vaccination deniers are predicted to have the smallest impact.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy

2022

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“…For the past decade, rising ocean temperatures and increasing numbers of measles outbreaks have had scientists worried about climate change denial and vaccination skepticism [1][2][3]. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented demonstration of the immediate threat that science skepticism constitutes to society-whether it is skeptics' neglect of social distancing measures, their protest against a yet to be developed vaccine (as of 2020), or plain disbelief in the existence of the virus [4][5][6]. Critically, these behaviors and beliefs often seem to be accompanied by discussions surrounding the trustworthiness of the expert scientists in charge of countries' responses to the pandemic (such as Dr. Fauci in the United States, Dr. Drosten in Germany, or Dr. Van Dissel in the Netherlands).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 the first named prominent scientist, and6 the first named prominent novelist.� p < .05 �� p < .01 �� p < .001 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274379.t002…”

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confidence: 99%

The (im-)moral scientist? Measurement and framing effects shape the association between scientists and immorality

2022

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Recent years have not only seen growing public distrust in science, but also in the people conducting science. Yet, attitudes toward scientists remain largely unexplored, and the limited body of literature that exists points to an interesting ambivalence. While survey data suggest scientists to be positively evaluated (e.g., respected and trusted), research has found scientists to be perceived as capable of immoral behavior. We report two experiments aimed at identifying what contributes to this ambivalence through systematic investigations of stereotypical perceptions of scientists. In these studies, we particularly focus on two potential sources of inconsistencies in previous work: divergent operationalizations of morality (measurement effects), and different specifications of the broad group of scientists (framing effects). Results show that scientists are generally perceived as more likely to violate binding as opposed to individualizing moral foundations, and that they deviate from control groups more strongly on the latter. The extent to which different morality measures reflect the differentiation between binding and individualizing moral foundations at least partially accounts for previous contradictory findings. Moreover, the results indicate large variation in perceptions of different types of scientists: people hold more positive attitudes toward university-affiliated scientists as compared to industry-affiliated scientists, with perceptions of the ‘typical scientist’ more closely resembling the latter. Taken together, the findings have important academic ramifications for science skepticism, morality, and stereotyping research as well as valuable practical implications for successful science communication.

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“…of Fauci and many COVID vaccine efforts. Moreover, previous research has demonstrated the persuasive effects of Fox News on Republican attitudes broadly, as well as on viewers' attitudes toward pandemic guidelines in particular (20,21).…”

Section: Message Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Counter-stereotypical Messaging and Partisan Cues: Moving the Needle on Vaccines in a Polarized U.S.

Larsen¹,

Hetherington²,

Greene³

et al. 2022

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We report a large-scale randomized controlled trial designed to assess whether the counterstereotypical messaging and partisan cues can induce people to get COVID-19 vaccines. Our study involved creating a 27-second video compilation of Donald Trump's comments about the vaccine from Fox News interviews. We presented the video to millions of U.S. YouTube users in October 2021. Results indicate that the campaign increased the number of vaccines in the average treated county by 103. Spread across 1,014 treated counties, the total effect of the campaign was an estimated increase of 104,036 vaccines. The campaign was cost-effective: with an overall budget of about $100,000, the cost to obtain an additional vaccine was about $1 or less.

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Frontiers: The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Noncompliance with Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract: Cable news channels—and Fox News in particular—affected the extent to which viewers’ complied with experts’ social distancing guidelines early on in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cited by 53 publications

References 40 publications

Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy

Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy

The (im-)moral scientist? Measurement and framing effects shape the association between scientists and immorality

Counter-stereotypical Messaging and Partisan Cues: Moving the Needle on Vaccines in a Polarized U.S.

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