Relations between Alternative and Social Media Use and Conspiracist Beliefs

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Peter van Aelst, whose interest is in how news media consumption affects conspiracy theory beliefs. Mediating factors here might include misperception and populist attitudes, and the present paper examines this in the context of conspiracy theories that believe that a small elite of actors deliberately hide the truth about what is happening in the world.

These beliefs might be heightened if people hold existing misperceptions already – e.g. about the efficacy of vaccines, or the impacts of migration –, as well as by populist attitudes that predispose people to be sceptical of elite actors in society. For instance, people might seek explanations for their misperceptions in all the wrong places, and in doing so come across mis- and disinformation that blames elites in society for all ills. Such processes are likely to be further heightened by people’s ideological extremity, which is likely to make them more susceptible to such ideas.

This project examined this through a survey in Flanders, and found that alternative and social media use was related to conspiracy beliefs, while mainstream media use was negatively related. Alternative media use also leads to misperceptions, and these further heighten conspiracy beliefs; it does not promote further populist perceptions. Ideological extremity further heightens these effects; this is not the case for social media.