A Multilevel Approach to COVID-19 Misperceptions

• In Event: Measuring Misperceptions and Misinformed Beliefs

Abstract

There is growing recognition of the importance to go beyond unidimensional strategies to measure misperception (e.g., a single Likert scale). Li and Wagner (2020) recently highlighted the utility of studying both the dimension of belief accuracy and the dimension of belief certainty (see also Pasek, Sood, and Krosnick 2015; Graham, 2020). Even these advances, however, continue to treat misinformation as a purely individual-level issue. Although individual-level factors like partisanship and partisan media use are found to be robust contributors to misperceptions, the formation of misperceptions is an inherently multilevel problem. In April 2020, we conducted an online survey with 2,139 U.S. adult respondents living in counties with differing numbers of local newspapers (0, 1, 2+) and COVID-19 cases (but otherwise share similar demographic features). We examined how misperceptions (including belief accuracy and certainty) related to COVID-19 are shaped by the intricate relationships between individual-level partisanship, media trust and contextual variances in one's local information environment and local public health conditions, casting a revealing light upon how misinformation operates within different critical political and social contexts.

Authors

• Jianing Li, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Michael W. Wagner, University of Wisconsin, Madison