How Right-Leaning Media Coverage of COVID-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic in the U.S.

By Matthew P. Motta, Dominik A. Stecuła, Christina E. Farhart. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 2020

333 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have yet to know the ultimate global impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, we do know that delays, denials and misinformation about COVID-19 have exacerbated its spread and slowed pandemic response, particularly in the U.S. (e.g., Abutaleb et al., 2020).

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Health, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b2c2d69f2bcf17388c3e00120a0a0065c9679809

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

1. Emily K. Vraga
2. Leticia Bode
3. Eric Merkley
4. Stuart Soroka
5. Daniel Romer
6. Kathleen Hall Jamieson
7. Derek Ruths
8. Elmie Nekmat

In Health

1. Daniel Romer
2. Kathleen Hall Jamieson
3. Emily K. Vraga
4. Leticia Bode

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Emily K. Vraga
2. Leticia Bode
3. Stuart Soroka
4. Daniel Romer
5. Kathleen Hall Jamieson
6. Eric Merkley
7. Elmie Nekmat

Citations in the corpus

• The causes and consequences of COVID-19 misperceptions: Understanding the role of news and social media (2020, background): “Highly polarized political environments and media ecosystems can lead to the spread of misinformation, such as in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic (Allcott et al., 2020; Motta et al., 2020).”
• Correction Experiences on Social Media During COVID-19 (2021, background): “Early evidence suggests this trend continues when considering COVID-19: right-leaning news outlets in the United States like Fox News were more likely to discuss COVID-19 misinformation, and their viewers were more likely to endorse such misinformation (Motta et al., 2020), and engage in fewer COVID”
• Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. (2020, methodology): “At the same time, several popular conservative media hosts and commentators expressed doubts about COVID-19 ’ s seriousness and lethality (Jamieson and Albarracín, 2020; Motta et al., 2020).”
• Politicization and Polarization in COVID-19 News Coverage (2020, background): “Right-wing media outlets were more likely to spread misinformation about COVID-19 in the beginning of the outbreak, and more frequent viewers of conservative media outlets were more likely to be misinformed about COVID-19 (Motta et al., 2020).”