Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has occurred alongside a worldwide infodemic where unprecedented levels of misinformation have contributed to widespread misconceptions about the novel coronavirus. Conspiracy theories, poorly sourced medical advice, and information trivializing the virus have ignored national borders and spread quickly. This information spread has occurred despite generally strong preferences for domestic national media and social media networks that tend to be geographically bounded. How, then, is (mis)information crossing borders so rapidly? Using social media and survey data, we evaluate the extent to which consumption and propagation patterns of domestic and international traditional news and social media can help inform theorizing about cross-national information spread. In a detailed case study of Canada, we employ a large multi-wave survey and a massive data set of Canadian Twitter users. We show that the majority of misinformation circulating on Twitter that is shared by Canadian accounts is retweeted from U.S.-based accounts. Moreover, exposure to U.S.-based media outlets is associated with COVID-19 misperceptions and increased exposure to U.S.-based information on Twitter is associated with an increased likelihood to post misinformation. We thus theorize and empirically identify a key globalizing infodemic pathway: disregard for national origin of social media posting.

Trust in scientific information mediates associations between conservatism and coronavirus responses in the U.S., but few other nations

“…That Canadians exhibited similar responses to Americans is partly explainable through its proximity to, and shared media ecosystem with, the United States see 61 and indeed, misinformation about the coronavirus in Canadian social media appears to originate from U.S. media 62 . The same pattern emerging in Indonesia, however, cannot logically be explained by media overlap with the United States.…”

How (Dis)trust in Scientific Information Links Political Ideology and Reactions Toward the Coronavirus Pandemic: Associations in the U.S. and Globally

“…However, trust in science exhibited consistent correlation patterns across countries, suggesting that its importance in coronavirus responses (see Plohl & Musil, 2020) is consistent across nations. While the presence of negative meta-correlations between conservatism and trust in scienti c information about the coronavirus was expected in the U.S. based on the extreme polarization of scienti c trust in that country (see Rekker, 2021;Gollwitzer et al, 2020) and Studies 1-3, and to a lesser extent in Canada due to a shared media ecosystem with the U.S. (see Taylor & Asmundson, 2021;Bridgman et al, 2021), the emergence of the same pattern in Indonesia was unexpected. However, recent evidence suggests that, like the U.S., Indonesia is experiencing intense political polarization about the coronavirus pandemic in particular (Mietzner, 2020), which may suggest that the pattern in the U.S. has more to do with the severity of polarization about this speci c issue, rather than unique features of American conservatism.…”

“…That Canadians exhibited similar responses to Americans is partly explainable through its proximity to, and shared media ecosystem with, the United States (see Amend & Barney, 2016;Taylor & Asmundson, 2021) and indeed, misinformation about the coronavirus in Canadian social media appears to originate from U.S. media (Bridgman et al, 2021). The same pattern emerging in Indonesia, however, cannot logically be explained by media overlap with the United States.…”

How (Dis)trust in Scientific Information Links Political Ideology and Reactions Toward the Coronavirus Pandemic: Associations in the U.S. and Globally

“…That Canadians exhibited similar responses to Americans is partly explainable through its proximity to, and shared media ecosystem with, the United States [see 52] and indeed, misinformation about the coronavirus in Canadian social media appears to originate from U.S. media [53]. The same pattern emerging in Indonesia, however, cannot logically be explained by media overlap with the United States.…”