The Impact of Populist Governments on Citizens' Mis- and Disinformation Susceptibility

The final panel of this ECREA PolCom 2023 conference is on mis- and disinformation, and starts with Václav Štětka; his focus is especially on countries with populist governments (the US, Brazil, Poland, and Serbia). What has been the impact from such populism on the COVID-19 crisis?

The present study is informed by the Receive-Accept-Sample model of public opinion formation, where the media diet online and offline determines the extent to which people are exposed to (i.e. receive) mis- and disinformation. How is this affected by uses of social and legacy media? Second, preexisting values and beliefs will affect how ready people are to accept or reject mis- and disinformation; populist attitudes as well as levels of trust in science and experts will play a role here. Third, social and political contexts at the time of the crisis will affect how people receive and affect information: how the populists in charge respond to the crisis (and in particular, accept or reject the science of the pandemic) is also likely to make a difference.

The study explored this through a representative survey across the four nations; it explored participants’ misinformation beliefs, media use practices, populist attitudes and voting intentions, and trust in experts. Of these, populist attitudes and voting intentions strongly affected susceptibility to mis- and disinformation; there were smaller but significant effects also from the use of messaging platforms, but not for social media in general. Conversely, trust in experts reduced such susceptibility somewhat.

Notably, for both populist and non-populist voters, use of podcasts also increased mis- and disinformation susceptibility. Where populist presidents endorsed mis- and disinformation (as in the US and Brazil), this also increased misinformation beliefs.