What Is the Government Hiding? Transparency, Trust, and False Beliefs

• In Event: Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories

Abstract

Over the last years, many democratic nations have experienced a decline in political and media trust. This confidence crisis contributes to the spread of misinformation by undermining the credibility of information presented by governments and mainstream media and opening some segments of the public to alternative information sources. Accordingly, research finds that people with low levels of trust are more likely to believe in false information. Researchers and international organizations have presented transparency as an effective way of restoring trust in governments and fighting disinformation, especially in a time of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, the scholarly literature examining the relationship between transparency and trust has yielded mixed results, suggesting that the effects of transparency might be limited and context dependent.

This article aims to further our understanding of the dynamics between perceptions of transparency, political trust, and susceptibility to misinformation. We are particularly interested in when perceptions of a lack of government transparency impact levels of trust and increase the likelihood of believing in false information. Our empirical analysis is twofold and builds on an original three-wave panel survey conducted on a representative sample of Canadians between April 2020 and January 2021. First, structural topic modeling and qualitative methods are used to classify answers to an open-ended question asking respondents to specify what they think the government is hiding about the COVID-19 pandemic. By identifying common narratives, we can better understand the dynamics behind perceptions of a lack of transparency and provide a more complex picture of how they relate to trust and susceptibility to misinformation. Second, regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between these classified perceptions of transparency, trust in governments, and susceptibility to misinformation. Susceptibility to misinformation is measured based on respondents’ evaluations, on a scale from 0 to 10, of the likelihood that a set of statements about the coronavirus are true. Models control for prior levels of trust, socio-demographics, and partisan identification.

We argue that there are different categories of perceptions of government transparency with different implications for political trust and COVID-19 misperceptions. Based on previous research, we expect to distinguish at least four levels of perceptions of government transparency: positive, indulgent, critical, and disenchanted (Enria et al. 2020; Grimmelikuijsen and Meijer 2014). The first two levels include respondents believing that the government is being transparent or justifying the government’s lack of transparency, for example, because it elicits greater compliance with sanitary measures. The third level comprises respondents criticizing the government’s lack of transparency on the decision-making process (e.g. the role of scientific evidence versus political/economic considerations), public policies, and their outcomes. The fourth level contains highly cynical citizens who believe governments are constantly lying and can rarely be trusted. We hypothesize that perceptions of a lack of transparency will have a positive impact on trust among “indulgent” citizens and a greater negative impact among “critical” citizens than “disenchanted” citizens, given the latter’s already low levels of trust. Indeed, while the relationship between perceptions of transparency and trust is endogenous to some extent, the panel component of the survey allows us to observe the potential reinforcing dynamics between prior levels of trust (at t-1 or t-2), perceptions that governments are hiding information, and current levels of trust. Finally, we expect perceptions of a lack of transparency to start increasing beliefs in false information at the third level, where citizens demand more openness about the decision-making process, public policies, and outcomes. The results provide valuable insights on how different groups perceive government communication and help identify specific areas where greater transparency could help restore trust in governments and limit the spread of misinformation.

Authors

• Mathieu Lavigne, McGill University

• Eric Belanger, McGill University

• Jean-François Daoust, University of Edinburgh

• Erick Lachapelle, Universite de Montreal

• Richard Nadeau, University of Montreal