Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable
U.S. adults in this group are less likely to get the facts right about COVID-19 and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.
A look at the Americans who believe there is some truth to the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was planned
Most Americans (71%) have heard of a conspiracy theory that alleges that powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak.
Three Months In, Many Americans See Exaggeration, Conspiracy Theories and Partisanship in COVID-19 News
After three months of news and information, 64% of U.S. adults say the CDC mostly gets the facts about the outbreak right; 30% say the same about President Trump and his administration.
Around three-in-ten Americans are very confident they could fact-check news about COVID-19
Americans’ confidence in checking COVID-19 information aligns closely with their confidence in checking the accuracy of news stories broadly.
SXSW 2020 Online Session: Misinformation and the 2020 U.S. Election
Amy Mitchell (Pew Research Center), Philip Howard (University of Oxford), Jane Lytvynenko (Buzzfeed News) and Lori Robertson (Factcheck.org) discuss misinformation during the coronavirus outbreak, and ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as part of SXSW 2020's virtual sessions.
About Seven-in-Ten U.S. Adults Say They Need to Take Breaks From COVID-19 News
61% give equal attention to national and local coronavirus news.
Early in outbreak, Americans cited claims about risk level and details of coronavirus as made-up news
A new analysis of open-ended responses to a survey of U.S. adults looks at the specific storylines or claims about COVID-19 that Americans said they were exposed to.
Cable TV and COVID-19: How Americans perceive the outbreak and view media coverage differ by main news source
Responses to cable news coverage and the pandemic vary notably among Americans who identify Fox News, MSNBC or CNN as their main source of political news.
QAnon’s conspiracy theories have seeped into U.S. politics, but most don’t know what it is
Despite the spread of the conspiracy theories, about three-quarters of U.S. adults say they have heard or read nothing at all about them.
Americans who primarily get news through social media are least likely to follow COVID-19 coverage, most likely to report seeing made-up news
More than half of these social media news consumers say they have encountered made-up news about COVID-19.
