Social Media and Trust in Scientific Expertise: Debating the Covid-19 Pandemic in The Netherlands

Abstract

This article examines the role of social media dynamics in the public exchange of information between scientists (experts), government (policy-makers), mass media (journalists), and citizens (nonexperts) during the first 4 months after the Covid-19 outbreak in the Netherlands. Over the past decade, the institutional model of science communication, based on linear vectors of information flows between institutions, has gradually converted into a networked model where social media propel information flows circulating between all actors involved. The question driving our research is, “How are social media deployed to both undermine and enhance public trust in scientific expertise during a health crisis?” Analyzing the public debate during the period of the corona outbreak in the Netherlands, we investigate two stages: the emergency response phase and the “smart exit strategy” phase, discussing how scientific experts, policy-makers, journalists, and citizens appropriate social media logic to steer information and to control the debate. We conclude by outlining the potential risks and benefits of adopting social media dynamics in institutional contexts of science communication.

Systematic Processing of COVID-19 Information: Relevant Channel Beliefs and Perceived Information Gathering Capacity as Moderators

“…In the COVID-19 context, exposure to fake news and misinformation erodes people’s trust in mainstream media, experts, and scientists, as well as policy makers (Ognyanova et al, 2020; van Dijck & Alinead, 2020), which may subsequently lead to risky health behaviors (Enders et al, 2020). Thus, it is important to evaluate how people’s beliefs about different information channels influence their information processing.…”

Staging Expertise in Times of COVID-19: An Analysis of the Science-Policy-Society Interface in the Dutch “Intelligent Lockdown”

“…The performance as found in the first phase of the pandemic fits the classical "science-forpolicy" formula (cf. Van Dijck and Alinejad, 2020). It goes back to the formulation of Aaron Wildavsky (1979) who introduced it as the "speaking truth to power" format.…”

Governing trust in European platform societies: Introduction to the special issue

“…Social media channels such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have been accused of exploiting a computational infrastructure driven by business models that incentivize disinformation. And governments, along with tech companies, have been blamed for not taking sufficient measures to stop the widespread 'infodemic' of inaccurate health information at the time of the Covid-pandemic (Van Dijck and Alinejad, 2020). A recent EU-report identifies how disinformation arises from the perfect collusion of the attention economy and its business models, platforms' choice architectures, algorithmic content curation and a lack of public oversight or democratic governance (Lewandowsky et al, 2020).…”