How Right-Leaning Media Coverage of COVID-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic in the U.S

While the role that misinformationplayed in slowing thefederal government�s response toCOVID-19is well-understood,less is known about why Americansmight accept misinformation about the virus, and how misinformation might affect trust inpublic health experts Pollingfrom the early stages of the pandemicsuggests that many Americans are misinformed about COVID-19 In early Marchof 2020, a poll conducted by YouGov and The Economist found that 13% of Americans believed the coronavirus was a hoax, 49% believed the coronavirus was man-made, and 44% believed the threat of the coronavirus was being exaggerated for political reasons iHowever, while COVID-19 misinformation is prevalent, it is not necessarily bi-partisan A March 1Civiqs poll found 68% of Democrats were moderately or extremely concerned about COVID-19, but only 21% of Republicans expressed moderate or extreme concern (Badger & Quealy 2020) iiAnother Quinnipiac University poll released early in March found that roughly six in 10 Republican voters were not especially concerned that the coronavirus would disrupt their lives (Russonello 2020a) iiiFurther, there have been considerable partisan gaps with respect to how people were behaviorally responding to the crisis;e g , washing their hands, working from home, or changing their travel plans (Stecula 2020) We expectthat variation in media coverage ofthe pandemic in its early stages mayhelp explain these partisan differences SomeAmerican media, particularly popular right-leaning outlets and pundits,spouted hoaxes and conspiracy theories behind the pandemic:Sean Hannity said the virus was a fraud by the �deep state�trying to spread panic, manipulate the economy, and suppress dissent;Rush Limbaugh suggested the virus was a plot hatched by the Chinese to harm the U S economy;and Fox Business anchor Trish Regan told viewers that the worry over coronavirus �is yet another attempt to impeach the president� (Peters and Grynbaum 2020) Asdenial and disinformation exploded onright-leaningmedia outlets, manyconservativeelites correspondingly downplayed concern about the virus (Abutaleb et al 2020;Badger & Quealy 2020;Peters, & Grynbaum 2020;Russonello 2020;Warzel 2020)