Media system dependency and change in risk perception during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

On February 27, 2020 the first case of COVID-19 contagion was detected in Mexico, and by the end of March phase 2 of the epidemic had been declared in the country when local transmission was detected. In a context of crisis and uncertainty like the one described, a risk perception tends to arise among the population that fears to be affected personally, to a large extent due to the influence exerted by the media by information they provide about the contingency, which derived from the media system dependency that occurs in the population. In order to determine the risk perception present in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the influence that media consumption had on the population’s attitude, an online analytical survey was carried out on 630 Mexican respondents. The results present a population with a relatively low risk perception, but with a moderate dependency when it comes to getting information about everything that has to do with the pandemic. In addition, it is possible to observe that this dependency tends to generate an increase, in an indirect manner, of the risk perception through the consumption of television, the digital press and Facebook.