Navigating the 'Infodemic': How People in Six Countries Access and Rate News and Information about Coronavirus

"With the arrival and spread of COVID-19, 'we're not just fighting an epidemic; we're fighting an infodemic'." - World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, February 15 2020

Both information and misinformation shape how people understand and respond to a public health crisis, and how they evaluate which institutions are helping address it (and which are not). The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a vast volume of news and information, some of which is ambiguous, uncertain, misleading, or downright false. In an effort to understand how people access and rate news and information about COVID-19 from different sources, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the Misinformation, Science and Media project (run with the Oxford Internet Institute and supported by the Oxford Martin School) commissioned a survey across Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US).

The researchers explain that, during this crisis, social media platforms have joined news organisations and governments in trying to help people understand coronavirus. For example: Facebook has introduced a 'COVID-19 Information Center'; Google Search provides an SOS Alert, new knowledge panels, and an information and resources centre for the virus; in some countries, YouTube features information from health authorities; Twitter presents Coronavirus tweets from news media and from authorities; and, following cases of misinformation on the platform, Instagram has reserved its explore tab only for information from credible health organisations. Many of the major platform companies have also offered governments and health authorities advertising credits to spread public health messages.

For the study, samples in each country were assembled using nationally representative quotas for age, gender, and region. The online questionnaire, fielded from March 31 to April 7 2020, revealed these key findings:

• How do people access news on COVID-19?
  • News use is up across all 6 countries. Television and online are the most popular way of getting news; the figures for newspapers are lower than normal, as countries have entered lockdown, complicating print distribution and greatly reducing single copy sales. Otherwise, the coronavirus crisis has not changed the structural shift to digital or changed the demographic profile of different sources of news.
  • Across the 6 countries, only about two-thirds say they have relied on news organisations, ranging from a low 47% in Germany to a high 77% in South Korea; other sources, including various government, health authorities, and expert sources, are widely relied on.
  • In all 6 countries, people with low levels of formal education are much less likely to say that they rely on news organisations for news and information about coronavirus, and more likely to rely on social media and messaging applications. In Argentina, South Korea, Spain, and the US, young people are much more likely to rely on social media, and in Germany, the UK, and the US, to rely on messaging applications groups.
• With regard to trust:
  • In every country surveyed, very high numbers of people across age groups, levels of education, and political views rate scientists, doctors, and other health experts as trustworthy sources of information about coronavirus. Three-quarters of respondents trust national or international public health organisations, a majority of respondents rate news organisations relatively trustworthy, and in every country apart from Spain and the US, a majority rates their national government trustworthy as well.
  • While levels of trust in scientists and experts are consistently high, and levels of trust in ordinary people are consistently more limited, there are significant political differences in trust in news organisations and in the government, especially in the (highly polarised) US, where people on the left of the political spectrum trust news organisations much more than they trust the government, and people on the right trust the government much more than they trust news organisations.
  • When asked how trustworthy they find news and information about coronavirus from different platforms, most respondents rate platforms less trustworthy than experts, health authorities, and news organisations. Results vary significantly across different types of platforms: Averaged across the 6 countries, the "trust gap" between information from news organisations and information from social media is 33 percentage points, between news and video sites 30 percentage points, between news and messaging applications 35 percentage points, and between news and search engines 14 percentage points.
• Asked how much false or misleading information about COVID-19, if any, people think they have seen from different sources and platforms, 4 findings stand out:
  1. For every source and every platform in every country covered, a minority say they have come across a lot or a great deal of false or misleading information around coronavirus.
  2. Among sources, "bottom-up" false or misleading misinformation spread by ordinary people whom respondents do not know personally is most widely identified (though in South Korea, Spain, and the US, respondents say individual politicians generate large volumes of "top-down" misinformation). On average, about one-third say they have seen a lot or a great deal of false or misleading bottom-up misinformation in the last week.
  3. Among platforms, concern is focused on social media and messaging applications, where on average about one-third of respondents say they have seen a lot or a great deal of false or misleading information in the last week.
  4. While concern about false or misleading information about coronavirus from news organisations and national government is less widespread than concerns over ordinary people, social media, messaging applications, and in some countries individual politicians, a significant majority are still worried - about one-quarter on average for both news and government.
• What is the level of understanding/knowledge about COVID-19?
  • A majority of respondents in every country say that the news media have helped them understand the crisis and explain what they can do. However, about one in three say they feel the news media have exaggerated the pandemic.
  • Most people do relatively well when asked a series of factual questions about coronavirus, with a clear majority answering more than half the questions correctly (more than three-quarters in every country apart from South Korea (58%) and the US (65%)). Regression analysis shows that using news organisations as a source of information is associated with a statistically significant increase in coronavirus knowledge in every country except Argentina and Spain. No source of, or platform for, information in the dataset is consistently and significantly associated with lower coronavirus knowledge.
  • Respondents with low levels of formal education give more incorrect responses to most questions, and for some questions, in particular on issues that high-profile politicians and other prominent public figures have opined on, political orientation plays a large role.
• Like knowledge, behaviour is influenced by many other factors than news and information, and survey responses are not always particularly reliable guides to what people actually do. That said, people's responses to a set of coronavirus-relevant questions about what they have done yesterday suggests that most people are following social distancing recommendations, and many are sheltering in place.

Reflecting on the findings, the researchers are concerned that "Large minorities in every country do not engage with news (and do not trust it), and do not engage with government advice (and do not trust it), and, in turn, often know less about the crisis. This has to be addressed if important information is to reach - and be taken seriously by - everyone. So clearly, there is still much work to do..."

The researchers contend that news organisations play a crucial role in this work. They not only provide people with news and information about coronavirus, but independent news organisations can help hold national governments, health authorities, and other powerful actors to account for how they respond to the crisis.

In conclusion: "access to accurate, relevant, reliable, trusted information from independent news media and other sources can help fight the 'infodemic' and thus help people help themselves and their societies."