JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Belief in conspiracy theories regarding the coronavirus pandemic in the US has been associated with reductions in both actions to prevent the spread of the infection (e.g., mask wearing) and intentions to accept a vaccine when one becomes available. At the same time, using cross sectional data, patterns of media use have been associated with acceptance of COVID-related conspiracy beliefs. Scholars have long recognized that belief in any conspiracy theory tends to be associated with belief in others. Here we ask whether the type of media on which a person relies increased, decreased or had no additional effect on that person’s COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs over a four-month period early in the pandemic in the US.

Objective:

In this study, we used panel data to explore whether use of conservative and social media which were previously found to be positively related to belief in pandemic conspiracies were associated with a net increase in the strength of those and related beliefs in the US from March to July of 2020 and whether mainstream news sources, which were previously found to be inversely related to belief in pandemic conspiracies, continued to reduce the strength of such beliefs over the same time period. Additionally, we asked whether media use was related to subsequent mask wearing and vaccination intentions as mediated by subsequent changes in pandemic conspiracy beliefs.

Methods:

A survey that we conducted with a national US probability sample in March of 2020 and again in July with 840 respondents assessed belief in pandemic conspiracy theories, use of various types of media information sources, actions taken to prevent the spread of the disease and intentions to vaccinate, beliefs related to those outcomes, and various demographic characteristics. Change across the two waves was analyzed using path analytic techniques.

Results:

We found that conservative media use predicted an increase in conspiracy beliefs and that mainstream print reliance reduced belief in those conspiracies. Importantly, conspiracy belief changes between the two waves of the study mediated subsequent levels of mask wearing and changes in vaccination intentions in July. By contrast, social media use did not predict continued growth in conspiracy beliefs.

Conclusions:

The findings point to the need for greater efforts on the part of conservative media to report reliable information about the pandemic from reliable sources. They suggest as well that social media platforms may be having some success in reducing the presence of content that supports conspiratorial pandemic theories.