People living in the United States are three times more likely to share misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 than people in four other English-speaking countries, including Canada, a study from Simon Fraser University has found.
When the entire world came to a halt in early 2020 due to the pandemic, researchers had a rare opportunity to study the sharing of the same conspiracy theories and other misinformation across multiple countries.
SFU political science professor Mark Pickup, along with colleagues from Colorado State University and McMaster University, focused on five English-speaking western democracies: the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
The researchers found that people in the US were no more likely to report misinformation than people living in any of the other countries, but they were three times more likely to share these theories with their followers.
America is an exception. Our findings are consistent with recent work on the disproportionate role Americans play in sharing misinformation on social media.”
Mark Pickup, professor of political science at SFU
According to the study, published in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, there are a few reasons why Americans stand out from other countries.
While people in other countries reported that they shared misinformation to raise awareness or criticize them, Americans are considerably more likely to share theories to promote or show support for them and use it as a way to connect with others. people.
The polarized US political landscape, which has also featured prominently in debates over COVID-19, has also correlated with the sharing of misinformation. Those who identified as conservative and those who trusted the Trump administration were more likely to share misinformation online.
In all countries, those who have populist attitudes and are distrustful of health authorities are more likely to share misinformation than those who do not.
In Canada, research found that the top reason people shared conspiracy theories online was so that people would be aware of them, and the second most common reason was to criticize them.
Facebook was the most common platform for sharing disinformation, accounting for more than half of those sharing disinformation in each country.
The results are based on their study of thousands of nationally representative surveys conducted in each country in July 2020 and January 2021.
Pickup, M., et al. (2022) Who shares conspiracy theories and other misinformation about Covid-19 online: Research evidence from five countries. Journal of Quantitative Description Digital Media. doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2022.024.
