The Effect of Fox News on Health Behavior During COVID-19

Ash, Elliott; Galletta, Sergio; Hangartner, Dominik; Margalit, Yotam; Pinna, Matteo

doi:10.31235/osf.io/abqe5

Cited by 47 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Perceived severity was also indicated by the number of media sources of information people used to learn about COVID-19 in the past 7 days. While different sources of media and public health agents may deliver different messages about severity and recommended responses to the pandemic (Ash, Galletta, Hangartner, Margalit, & Pinna, 2020 ; Simonov, Sacher, Dubé, & Biswas, 2020 ), we assume that the more sources they accessed, the more severe they perceived the pandemic to be. The 10 sources we used include ABC news, CBS news, CNN, Fox news, MSNBC news, NBC news, national newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today, local newspapers, public television and radio, and local TV news.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age differences in the relationship between threatening and coping mechanisms and preventive behaviors in the time of COVID-19 in the United States: Protection Motivation Theory

Kim

Crimmins

2021

ResPsy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is important to understand the factors motivating people to adopt recommended behavioral changes in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and how they differ for younger and older adults. Using a nationally representative sample from the Understanding America Study (3/10-3/31/2020), we assessed how four cognitive mediators affected uptake of protective activities for younger (aged 18-34) and older adults (aged 65+) during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Confirmatory factor analysis based on Protective Motivation Theory demonstrated associations between our observed variables and the latent constructs: perceived severity and susceptibility, and response efficacy and self-efficacy. Among younger adults, coping appraisal such as perceptions of effectiveness of behaviors in protecting them from coronavirus and belief in their ability to perform recommended changes led them to adopt preventive behaviors; for older people, threat appraisal such as perception of severity was associated with behavioral responses. Younger people may rely more on their assessment of coping resources and effectiveness in their response to COVID-19; while older people base their behavioral responses on their perception of the severity of the situation, which they appraise using information from media and the severity of the epidemic in their state of residence. Different strategies are required to motivate older and younger people to adopt behavioral modifications, which are critical in reducing further spread of COVID-19.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age differences in the relationship between threatening and coping mechanisms and preventive behaviors in the time of COVID-19 in the United States: Protection Motivation Theory

Kim

Crimmins

2021

ResPsy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent studies (Simonov et al, 2020;Ash et al, 2020;Ananyev et al, 2020) use the channel numbers instrument developed by Martin and Yurukoglu (2017) to establish a causal effect of exposure to Fox News on mobility. We complement these findings through our analysis of COVID-19 cases and deaths (in addition to stay-at-home behavior, the primary outcome studied in these papers) and our use of 2020 rather than 2015 viewership data (albeit at a coarser geographical level).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misinformation During a Pandemic

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Media outlets often present diverging, even conflicting, perspectives on reality-not only informing, but potentially misinforming audiences. We study the extent to which misinformation broadcast on mass media at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic influenced health outcomes. We first document large differences in content between the two most popular cable news shows in the US, both on the same network, and in the adoption of preventative behaviors among viewers of these shows. Through both a selection-on-observables strategy and an instrumental variable approach, we find that areas with greater exposure to the show downplaying the threat of COVID-19 experienced a greater number of cases and deaths. We assess magnitudes through an epidemiological model highlighting the role of externalities and provide evidence that contemporaneous information exposure is a key underlying mechanism.

show abstract

“…Some studies also focused on the relationship between information exposure and COVID-19 outcomes. Two quasi-experimental studies from the U.S. showed that exposure to the ambiguous coverage of Fox News during Spring 2020 reduced compliance with countermeasures (Ash et al 2020;Simonov et al 2020). A country-comparative study including Germany found that misinformation (information perceived as unintentionally wrong) and disinformation (information perceived as intentionally wrong) about the virus were perceived as prevalent in information environments.…”

Section: Covid-19 and Information Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Stier¹,

Weiß²,

Hartmann³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

The Effect of Fox News on Health Behavior During COVID-19

Cited by 47 publications

References 0 publications

Age differences in the relationship between threatening and coping mechanisms and preventive behaviors in the time of COVID-19 in the United States: Protection Motivation Theory

Age differences in the relationship between threatening and coping mechanisms and preventive behaviors in the time of COVID-19 in the United States: Protection Motivation Theory

Misinformation During a Pandemic

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About