Believe it or not. The role of ideology as a predictor of trust in mainstream and social media during COVID-19

Abstract

Introduction: The goal of this article is to analyze the extent to which ideology intervenes in citizens' trust in the news that appears in traditional and social media during COVID-19. Methodology: To do this, a quantitative approach based on the online survey technique is used. The questionnaire was launched in July 2021 through the Qualtrics platform and was answered by 2,803 citizens residing in Brazil (726), Spain (682), the United States (694), and India (702). Results: We found a connection between ideology and confidence in traditional media, strongly conditioned by the socio-political context. In addition, right-wing citizens tend to trust the information they receive from digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp better than left-wing citizens. This uneven impact of trust in the media could result in a heterogeneous effect of fake news, with right-wing citizens most likely believing political news appearing on social media Discussion and Conclusions: This article contributes to expanding prior knowledge about the trust in mainstream and social media, with considerable emphasis on the factors that have a predominant influence in four countries with different social and political structures and media systems: Spain, United States, India, and Brazil. In this context, it has been observed how ideology is an essential factor in all of them. When this relevant variable is controlled for, and despite what previous studies had determined (Newman et al., 2021), factors such as educational or income level do not seem to play a significant role.