Public Trust in the Media during the Coronavirus Pandemic

"The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by an almost unprecedented global crisis of information."

This research study looks at the information needs and news consumption behaviour of the Pakistani public during the pandemic in order to find out what information sources and types of media people relied on for COVID-19 updates. It also seeks to determine the level of trust the public had in the COVID-19 information supplied by official sources, mainstream media, social media, and personal networks, and it attempts to identify whether or not the pandemic generally affected citizens' access to information. According to the report, the findings may prove helpful in devising crisis communication strategies and public awareness campaigns to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 situation, as well as similar public health emergencies that may arise in Pakistan in the future.

As explained in the report, "The importance of timely, accurate, and reliable information became evident during the COVID-19 pandemic as the media and the public alike felt the pressures of our vulnerable information ecosystem. The issue of trust in the media also took on a new significance. It was clear that without public trust in media, the effectiveness of awareness messages for health safety would fade away and the public health response to control the pandemic itself could be undermined."

A quantitative survey was selected as the appropriate method for this research because surveys offer an efficient and often low-cost way to gather representative data about public perceptions. The research was conducted using a nationwide survey of 345 individuals.

The following are some of the main findings (as per the Executive Summary):

• The public generally approved of the Pakistani news media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. A majority of the respondents agreed that the COVID news coverage had provided them with the information they needed, provided largely accurate information, worked for the benefit of the public, and helped the country's image.
• People found the mainstream media the most trustworthy source of COVID-19 news and information, with 57% expressing their trust in it. Family-and-friends networks were the second most trusted source for coronavirus information (56%).
• The lowest level of credibility was associated with social media, with 30% finding it untrustworthy for COVID-19-related news and information. One in five respondents also said they never used social media to access coronavirus information.
• 50% of the respondents said they had never used the government's COVID-19 web portal or smartphone app. But a majority of the respondents (52%) still considered official sources trustworthy for coronavirus information.
• A majority of the respondents (55%) used the TV medium to get news and information about COVID-19.
• People were most interested in getting information about the safety measures against the virus. Six out of 10 respondents said they wanted to know about precautions that could protect them from becoming infected with the COVID-19.
• 74% of the respondents said the pandemic and the accompanying lockdown did not reduce their ability to access news and information.

Based on the findings, the report makes a number of recommendations directed at government, media organisations, and researchers. For example, it recommends that authorities should use mainly television for public awareness campaigns on COVID-19. They should also issue health and safety messages in regional languages to ensure that all citizens access life-saving information. Media organisations should continue to provide practical information about COVID-19 and to monitor social media networks for potentially harmful false information and rumours in order to counter them with facts and accurate information. As the study showed that people did not trust social media for information as much as they did other sources, the report suggests that researchers could examine whether exposure to COVID-related disinformation has led to a distrust of social networks as a source of information on COVID-19.