Science in the media: the scientific community's perception of the COVID-19 media coverage in Spain

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic was the most prominent feature in the media in 2020. This research analyzes the scientific community's perception of the journalistic coverage of the pandemic in the Spanish media. Based on a survey with the participation of 818 respondents, the study revealed that scientists believe that radio did the best job in reporting the pandemic, whereas television did the worst. Among our findings, it is worthwhile to mention that — according to scientists — the media used sensationalistic tones and reports were not particularly accurate nor realistic. Finally, we included the scientific community's recommendations to treat the subject more appropriately.

La ciencia y los científicos como fuentes informativas de los medios

“…Aunque relativamente satisfactorias, estas colaboraciones entre periodistas y científicos aún ofrecen un considerable margen de mejora desde el punto de vista de los científicos, en línea con lo que muestran otras investigaciones recientes sobre la pandemia como las de autores como de Sola-Pueyo (2021). Y esto debe reflejarse tanto desde un punto de vista cuantitativo -mayor presencia de científicos como fuentes de información-como desde un prisma cualitativo.…”

“…Estos conceptos deberían anteponerse al opuesto: el sensacionalismo que, de acuerdo con algunas investigaciones ya publicadas sobre la cobertura periodística de la pandemia en concreto ha imperado en los medios (De Sola-Pueyo, 2021), pero también previamente en otros temas científicos:…”

Debunking strategies for misleading bar charts

“…To counterbalance the spread of misinformation in online media and to help readers recognize it, factcheckers are using these same media channels to debunk misinformation [Nieminen & Rapeli, 2019]. Research on how to factcheck efficiently has already resulted in some general guidelines on how to present the factcheck, and some practical recommendations such as not to repeat the misleading message and to use short messages rather than simple retractions [de Sola, 2021;Ecker et al, 2020;Walter et al, 2020;Young et al, 2018]. However, since the literature focusses on textual information, still little is known about how to debunk misinformation presented visually.…”

Debunking strategies for misleading bar charts

“…1 To counterbalance the spread of misinformation in online media and to help readers recognize it, factcheckers are using these same media channels to debunk misinformation [Nieminen & Rapeli, 2019]. Research on how to factcheck efficiently has already resulted in some general guidelines on how to present the factcheck, and some practical recommendations such as not to repeat the misleading message and to use short messages rather than simple retractions [de Sola, 2021;Ecker, O'Reilly, Reid & Chang, 2020;Walter, Cohen, Holbert & Morag, 2020;Young, Jamieson, Poulsen & Goldring, 2018]. However, since the literature focusses on textual information, still little is known about how to debunk misinformation presented visually.…”