The Infodemic and Peace Journalism--Part I
The impact of pandemic misinformation has been dubbed the “infodemic” for good reason. The infodemic has had a significant impact on the public, and on the study and practice of journalism, including peace journalism.

I recently finished a chapter on the infodemic and peace journalism for an upcoming textbook, "The Pandemic and At-risk Society: Perspectives of Communication," that will be published later this year. I am providing excerpts of this chapter here in Peace Journalism Insights. In today’s entry, we’ll briefly look at the coverage, and its impact on society.

The coverage
There are many studies examining the framing of Covid-19 reporting around the world. One study from researchers Margrit Betke and Lei Guo at Boston University tracked Covid-19-related news in China, South Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom. This study showed that stories in these countries were framed around scientific research, frontline healthcare workers, and the domestic and global outbreaks. However, in all four countries, researchers noted a shift to domestic and international economic consequences and financial fallout of the pandemic—topics that have remained a primary focus in these four countries.

Also, researchers analyzed the tone of pandemic news stories in the mainstream U.S. media and transcripts from television broadcasts and compared them to the content in international media outlets and scientific journals. They found “startling negativity” in the mainstream U.S. media.

For example, 90% of school-reopening articles from the U.S. mainstream media were negative, versus only 56% for the English-language media in other countries. Stories of increasing COVID-19 cases outnumbered stories about decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 — even during periods when new cases were declining, according to a working paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research.”

Polarized, Partisan Coverage
Around the world, much of the bad Covid information can be attributed to politicians and their media minions intent on filtering the pandemic through distorted partisan lenses, oftentimes putting the public at risk in the service of political ends.

One study looked at the similarities between supporters of right wing politicians Donald Trump in the U.S. and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The results of the study “have important public policy implications. Current studies in the US and Brazil have shown that districts with high voter support for Trump and Bolsonaro respectively, have steeper epidemiological curves for the COVID-19 spread (Ajzenman et al., 2020; Mariani et al., 2020; Allcott et al., 2020). Our research shows that this is consistent with government messages that made COVID-19 a wedge partisan issue. At a time when perceived health risks is critical to manage the COVID-19 pandemic successfully, findings of this article should be of interest to public health professionals and communication experts.”

In Brazil, it should come as no surprise that the partisanship stoked by Bolsonaro impacted audiences and spotlighted media-enhanced partisan narratives about the pandemic. According to one study, “Escalation in explicitly denying the gravity of the outbreak during late March affected public perceptions about the pandemic over time. Ajzenman et al. (2020) use cell phone location data to show that compliance with social distancing decreased more sharply after late March, especially in localities with larger support for the President. Calvo and Ventura (2020) show that social media messages had the potential to shape views about Covid-19. Finally, Storopoli et al. (2020) use original survey data to show that, while trust in the media is positively associated with Brazilians’ willingness to engage in preventive behavior towards the outbreak, trust in the federal government displays the opposite relationship.”

Polarizing, partisan coverage of the pandemic has also impacted audiences in the U.S., according to polling done by both Pew Research and Gallup. In 2020, both pollsters showed that Republicans (conservatives) were much less likely to take the risks of the coronavirus as seriously as Democrats (liberals).

A March 2020 Gallup poll “finds that Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to be worried about getting the virus; much less trusting in the federal government to deal with the situation; and more likely to believe that the virus will have a negative effect on the world's economy. Further, workers who identify or lean toward the Democratic Party are more likely to say the virus will have a negative impact on their work.”

The residual effects of partisan, polarizing reporting can be seen in 2021 in the form of vaccine hesitancy. Surveys show there is a large, partisan gap among those who say they have or will get the Covid 19 vaccine vs. those who won’t get vaccinated.  According to the Pew Research Center, “Partisan differences, which have long characterized views about the outbreak, are increasingly seen in vaccine intent. Democrats are now 27 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say they plan to get, or have already received, a coronavirus vaccine (83% to 56%). This gap is wider than those seen at multiple points in 2020.”

NEXT WEEK—Part II from the chapter. How can peace journalism be used to stamp out the infodemic?