Who Shares Conspiracy Theories and Other Misinformation about Covid-19 Online: Survey Evidence from Five Countries

Abstract

Social media have long been considered a venue in which conspiracy theories and other misinformation incubate and spread. It has been no different during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, understanding who spreads misinformation by sharing it on social media, and why, has been underexplored, especially in a cross-national context. The global nature of the novel coronavirus pandemic presents an opportunity to understand the exposure and sharing of the same COVID-19 misinformation across multiple countries. We rely on nationally representative surveys conducted in July of 2020 and January of 2021 in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, to begin to understand what characterizes those who are most likely to share misinformation online. We find that Americans are no more likely to encounter prominent COVID-19 misinformation online but are considerably more likely to share it. Americans are less likely to say they share misinformation to make others aware of it or to criticize it, and considerably more likely to say their motivation is to promote it or to demonstrate their support for it. Americans are also more likely to say their motivation is to connect with others. In all countries but Canada, those who trust information from social media are more likely to share misinformation than those who do not trust social media. In all countries, those who have populist attitudes and distrust health officials are more likely to share misinformation than those who do not. In the U.S. in particular, sharing misinformation is associated with trust in government and identifying as conservative. Our results make clear that the United States is an outlier. We theorize why this might be the case.

Public Health Communication Reduces COVID-19 Misinformation Sharing and Boosts Self-Efficacy

“…Nevertheless, the ephemeral effect sizes serve as an important reminder for researchers and practitioners alike that the effects of misinformation interventions often are small (Pennycook and Rand 2022), diminish over time (Carnahan et al 2021;Carey et al 2022), and thus require repeated intervention in practice (Ecker et al, 2022). Second, while a relatively small share of people share misinformation (Guess and Lyons 2020;Guess et al 2019;Cinelli et al 2021;Grinberg et al 2019), recent studies suggest that social and political goals serve as important motivations (Uscinski et al 2021;Osmundsen et al 2021;Petersen et al 2023;Rathje et al 2023;Pickup et al 2022) and some interventions may be less effective for people with certain political allegiances (Rathje et al 2022). In Section F of the appendix, we conduct exploratory analysis of whether the interventions have heterogeneous treatment effects across trust in government, trust in health authorities, cognitive reflection, need for closure, attention to social comparison information, age, gender, income, education, and partisanship.…”

Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Online News Consumption during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Moreover, low trust in official figures, which can be a root for denialism (Uscinski et al 2020) or anti-intellectualism (Merkley and Loewen 2021), makes corrections difficult as people could simply deny the corrections from experts (Uscinski et al 2020) as well as be less open to COVID-19-related news and expert-featured news than other news (Merkley and Loewen 2021). Evidence from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, suggests that people with low trust in health officials are more likely to amplify misinformation (Pickup et al 2022).…”

Vaccine Hesitancy and the Concept of Trust: An Analysis Based on the Israeli COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

“…See, e.g. Abul-Fottouh et al 2020 ; Gruzd et al 2023 ; Pickup et al 2022 ; Ghaddar et al 2022 ; Focosi et al 2021 ; Schillinger et al 2020 ; Cinelli et al 2020 .…”