Media consumption and irrational beliefs about COVID-19 pandemic

Todosijević, Bojan (2021) Media consumption and irrational beliefs about COVID-19 pandemic. In: Political and Economic Self-Constitution: Education for Digital Citizenship in Post-Pandemic Times: Proceedings of the IX International scientific and practical seminar, October 29th, 2021. Federal University of Santa Catarina - UFSC ; Center for Personal and Social Transformations, Florianópolis ; Kyiv, pp. 56-62. ISBN 978-65-994142-8-2

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Abstract

This study tests hypothesis that holding irrational COVID19 beliefs is associated with the character of the media outlets one pays attention to. The analysis is based on public opinion data from Serbia, collected after the pandemic outbreak in 2020. Serbia is not an exception concerning the role of media in distributing accurate and misleading information about the pandemic. Different media proved committed to responsible information to a varying degree. However, public officials also contributed to the informational confusion by providing inaccurate, unreliable, and often changing statements themselves. Although no media source could go without at least transferring some irrational beliefs about the pandemic, the outlets differed in their relative presence. Hence, we expect to find a significant correlation between higher consumption of media outlets characterized by more unreliable information content than those that are fact-driven and outside the scope of government-controlled media in Serbia.

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