Examining the Role of Distrust in Science and Social Media Use: Effects on Susceptibility to COVID Misperceptions with Panel Data

ABSTRACT

Trust in scientific actors and institutions in the United States is at an all-time low. At the same time, studies show that people use social media for science information and become increasingly vulnerable to COVID-19-related misinformation. Yet, we do not know whether low levels of trust cause people to turn to social media in the first place. We argue that if people do not trust the scientific information provided by scientists, they are likely to turn to social media to get alternative scientific information (rather than relying on mainstream sources to get pandemic-related information), which in turn can increase susceptibility to COVID-19 misperceptions. Based on two-wave U.S. panel data, we found that distrust in science drives the uses of social media for COVID-19 information, and reliance on social media for COVID-19 information increases susceptibility to COVID-19 misperceptions.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Sangwon Lee

Sangwon Lee (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at New Mexico State University, USA. His research examines how new media technologies (e.g., social media, AI, etc.) impact our daily lives and society as a whole.

S. Mo Jones-Jang

S Mo Jones-Jang (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Boston College. His research focuses on AI and misinformation in the science context.

Myojung Chung

Myojung Chung (Ph.D., Syracuse University) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University. Her primary research focuses on how people process and distribute misinformation in the digital era and how to combat misinformation.

Edmund W. J. Lee

Edmund W. J. Lee (Ph.D., Nanyang Technological University) is an Assistant Professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Assistant Director at the Centre for Information Integrity and the Internet (IN-cube). Lee’s research focuses on developing health technologies to tackle health inequalities, and how to take advantage of digital traces data in an intelligent and ethical manner to understand and improve public health outcomes.

Trevor Diehl

Trevor Diehl (Ph.D., University of Vienna) is an Associate Professor at Central Michigan University at the School of Broadcast and Cinematic Arts. His research interests include social media news audiences and political participation, multiplatform news, and emerging journalism practices.