“The Looming, Crazy Stalker Coronavirus”: Fear Mongering, Fake News, and the Diffusion of Distrust

Alexandrea J Ravenelle,Abigail Newell,Ken Cai Kowalski

doi:10.1177/23780231211024776

Alexandrea J Ravenelle, Abigail Newell + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231211024776

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Abstract

The authors explore media distrust among a sample of precarious and gig workers interviewed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although these left-leaning respondents initially increased their media consumption at the outset of the pandemic, they soon complained of media sensationalism and repurposed a readily available cultural tool: claims of “fake news.” As a result, these unsettled times have resulted in a “diffusion of distrust,” in which an elite conservative discourse of skepticism toward the media has also become a popular form of compensatory control among self-identified liberals. Perceiving “fake news” and media sensationalism as “not good” for their mental health, respondents also reported experiencing media burnout and withdrawing from media consumption. As the pandemic passes its one-year anniversary, this research has implications for long-term media coverage on COVID-19 and ongoing media trust and consumption.

Highlights

Americans have become increasingly skeptical of the media since the 1970s (Lee and Hosam 2020; Tsfati and Cohen 2012)
Grappling with conflicting reports on the source of the virus, how it spreads, and how to protect themselves and loved ones (Sanger et al 2020), respondents repurposed a readily available cultural tool: claims of “fake news.”. These unsettled times have resulted in a “diffusion of distrust,” in which an elite conservative discourse of skepticism toward the media has become a popular form of compensatory control (Kay et al 2009) used by conservatives and liberals alike to make sense of the contradictory, continuous coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic
Drawing on interviews conducted with nearly 200 precarious workers in the New York metropolitan area during the height of New York City’s coronavirus outbreak, we find that rather than reassuring respondents that the virus was real, and an issue of concern, participants criticized media coverage as being sensational “fake news” intended to boost ratings and profits

Summary

Introduction

Americans have become increasingly skeptical of the media since the 1970s (Lee and Hosam 2020; Tsfati and Cohen 2012). Media distrust increasingly echoes political divides, with self-described Democrats trusting network news, NPR, and the New York Times, whereas most Republicans trust only Fox News (Jurkowitz et al 2020; Stroud 2011). As noted by the Pew Foundation, early in the pandemic, Americans were more positive than negative about COVID-19 news coverage (Gottfried, Walker, and Mitchell 2020). In light of this increase of media use, how has COVID-19 affected the perceptions of low-income, liberal adults regarding the media? Shepherd, MacKendrick and Mora (2020) found that existing political polarization and attitudes about Trump affected the public’s understanding of COVID-19, our in-depth interviews suggest that these perspectives may be more nuanced than survey research has previously found

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