Will I Get COVID-19? Partisanship, Social Media Frames, and Perceptions of Health Risk in Brazil

Abstract

In these polarized and challenging times, not even perceptions of personal risk are immune to partisanship. This article introduces results from a new survey with an embedded social media experiment conducted during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. Descriptive results show that progovernment and opposition partisans report very different expectations of health and job risks. Job and health policy have become wedge issues that elicit partisan responses. The analysis exploits random variation in the survey recruitment to show the effects of the president’s first speech on national television on the perceived risk and the moderating effect of partisanship. The article presents a framing experiment that models key cognitive mechanisms driving partisan differences in perceptions of health risks and job security during the COVID-19 crisis.

Political Preferences, Knowledge, and Misinformation About COVID-19: The Case of Brazil

“…This is consistent with the divide observed at the elite level where Democrats have championed the adoption health guidelines to combat the pandemic while Republicans have downplayed them (Clinton et al, 2020;Green et al, 2020;Gadarian et al, 2021). In Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro has systematically minimized the seriousness of the virus and its illness (Barberia and Gómez, 2020;Ortega and Orsini, 2020), Calvo and Ventura (2021) show that Bolsonaro voters are more optimistic about the health risks and job insecurity associated with the COVID-19 pandemic when compared to those who voted for Fernando Haddad (PT) in the second round of the 2018 presidential election. Furthermore, a study looking at vaccination acceptance finds that Bolsonaro supporters are less likely to vaccinate than those who do not support him (Gramacho and Turgeon, 2021), in line with Bolsonaro's expressed skepticism about vaccination as a means to combat the pandemic.…”

“…The US and Brazil are two emblematic cases that illustrate this situation, despite other notable differences in their capacity to handle such crisis. In both countries, political elites, including their respective presidents Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, minimized the seriousness of the coronavirus and its illness since its outbreak and failed to be informative agents to curb the spread of the virus (Barberia and Gómez, 2020;Ortega and Orsini, 2020;Rutledge, 2020;Yamey and Gonsalves, 2020;Calvo and Ventura, 2021) 1 . This has resulted in lower compliance with health recommendations along partisan lines (Clinton et al, 2020) and many lives lost 2 .…”

The shot, the message, and the messenger: COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in Latin America

“…We further find that trust in the messenger, and sharing the messenger’s partisan or religious identity, increases individual responsiveness to endorsements, and can improve vaccine uptake 41 . This is consistent with existing studies, which reveal the deadly role that mistrust can play in exacerbating public health crises and the life-saving role of trust 42 – 47 .…”

Who Stays at Home? The Politics of Social Distancing in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…policy that we found decreased mobility across all three countries-are more effective when residents trust political institutions (Levi 1988;Levi, Sacks, and Tyler 2009;Tyler 1988Tyler , 2003Sunshine and Tyler 2003), have the socioeconomic resources to afford the costs of staying at home (Bodas and Peleg 2020;Wright et al 2020), perceive health risks to be higher (Brewer et al 2007;Champion and Skinner 2008;Galasso et al 2020;Rosentock 1974), and have differing partisan affiliations (Ajzenman et al 2020;Allcott et al 2020;Calvo and Ventura 2021;Cornelson and Miloucheva 2020;Grossman et al 2020).…”

“…Because each president downplayed the severity of the pandemic on numerous occasions, we expect that social distancing policies will be less effective in states where the presidents were more popular, as measured by their vote share in the past election. To extend the analysis of partisanship, we also consider how populist presidential messaging in the form of specific speeches dismissing the severity of the pandemic and, in some instances, explicitly urging citizens to disregard state-level social distancing orders, affected mobility (Ajzenman et al 2020;Calvo and Ventura 2021). We expect presidential messaging to correspond with increased mobility in states where the president enjoyed higher levels of popularity.…”