Information exposure, perceptions and behaviours during the first COVID-19 wave in Germany: Evidence from survey and Facebook data

Abstract

The role of information exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic seems ambiguous, as gains in knowledge from public information campaigns stand against fears of widespread misinformation, especially via social media. Using data from a large survey collected during the first COVID-19 wave in March 2020 as well as data from Facebook, this paper investigates from which sources (e.g., public or commercial broadcasting, newspapers or Facebook) Germans received news and how information exposure relates to perceptions, attitudes and behaviours concerning COVID-19. Regression analyses based on the survey data show that getting COVID-19-related information from a multitude of sources strongly predicted positive public health outcomes and that no individual source had negative effects. A quantitative text analysis of almost a million German public Facebook posts indicates that the positive individual-level effects might be related to a uniform coverage of COVID-19 that emphasised the severity of the pandemic, whereas misinformation seemed to be less widespread than feared. The results suggest that fears of an `infodemic' may be overstated and that the high salience of COVID-19 in media coverage helped the efforts to mitigate the pandemic. We discuss the findings against the backdrop of an increased politicisation of public-health measures during later COVID-19 waves.