Around three-in-ten Americans are very confident they could fact-check news about COVID-19
Americans’ confidence in checking COVID-19 information aligns closely with their confidence in checking the accuracy of news stories broadly.
SXSW 2020 Online Session: Misinformation and the 2020 U.S. Election
Amy Mitchell (Pew Research Center), Philip Howard (University of Oxford), Jane Lytvynenko (Buzzfeed News) and Lori Robertson (Factcheck.org) discuss misinformation during the coronavirus outbreak, and ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as part of SXSW 2020's virtual sessions.
Early in outbreak, Americans cited claims about risk level and details of coronavirus as made-up news
A new analysis of open-ended responses to a survey of U.S. adults looks at the specific storylines or claims about COVID-19 that Americans said they were exposed to.
Cable TV and COVID-19: How Americans perceive the outbreak and view media coverage differ by main news source
Responses to cable news coverage and the pandemic vary notably among Americans who identify Fox News, MSNBC or CNN as their main source of political news.
QAnon’s conspiracy theories have seeped into U.S. politics, but most don’t know what it is
Despite the spread of the conspiracy theories, about three-quarters of U.S. adults say they have heard or read nothing at all about them.
Americans who primarily get news through social media are least likely to follow COVID-19 coverage, most likely to report seeing made-up news
More than half of these social media news consumers say they have encountered made-up news about COVID-19.
An oasis of bipartisanship: Republicans and Democrats distrust social media sites for political and election news
Both Democrats and Republicans express far more distrust than trust of social media sites as sources for political and election news.
About three-quarters of Americans favor steps to restrict altered videos and images
A majority of Americans say altered videos and images create confusion about current issues, and most support restrictions on such content.
Many Americans Say Made-Up News Is a Critical Problem That Needs To Be Fixed
Politicians viewed as major creators of it, but journalists seen as the ones who should fix it
Partisans are divided on whether they associate the news media or Trump with ‘made-up’ news
Republicans and Democrats are particularly divided on how closely they connect made-up news to the news media or to President Trump.
