Social media, misinformation, and cultivation of informational mistrust: Cultivating Covid-19 mistrust

Abstract

We adopt the cultivation theory to identify the ways the increased exposures to (mis)information in social media and traditional media cultivate the perceptions of (1) informational mistrust and (2) ill-confidence in dealing with Covid-19 pandemic risk. Importantly, we expanded the theory and hypothesized about the roles of informal societal ties by investigating whether local community attachment and frequent friend-family interactions can mitigate the formation and consequence of mistrust arising from the exposure to misinformation. We found that the higher exposure to Covid-19 misinformation, as promulgated in both active and passive social media uses, was related to informational mistrust that was also linked to a lower level of confidence in telling the veracity of misinformation. Findings also show the significant relationships between two forms of informal social ties and misinformation confidence. We discuss how the abundance of information sources fuels misinformed citizenry as individuals are left alone to navigate increasingly confusing influx of unfounded misinformation abounded in social media.