Distrust, Conspiracies, and the Political Challenges of Coping with COVID-19
Funder: British Academy / Leverhulme Small Research Grants
with Florian Stoeckel (PI) and Jason Reifler (CoI), University of Exeter
2020-2021
Project summary
Do anti-establishment sentiments and distrust in elites and experts limit the ability of governments to
effectively deal with COVID-19? This project proposes an ambitious package of work of representative surveys
in the UK, Germany, and Italy to accomplish three specific objectives: 1) Measure anti-establishment
sentiment and distrust across multiple domains (e.g., politics and health) and examine how these beliefs
correlate with attitudes and beliefs about the coronavirus crisis and government response to it. 2) Understand
how citizens process COVID-19-related misinformation. 3) Test the effectiveness of interventions designed to
debunk misperceptions about the pandemic. We will use representative surveys with embedded experiments
in the UK, Germany and Italy that will also allow us to consider the role of country context. Our findings will
have important implications for policy responses to public health crises. They will also advance our theoretical
understanding of misperceptions and the conditions under which they can be corrected.
Funder: British Academy / Leverhulme Small Research Grants
with Florian Stoeckel (PI) and Jason Reifler (CoI), University of Exeter
2020-2021
Project summary
Do anti-establishment sentiments and distrust in elites and experts limit the ability of governments to
effectively deal with COVID-19? This project proposes an ambitious package of work of representative surveys
in the UK, Germany, and Italy to accomplish three specific objectives: 1) Measure anti-establishment
sentiment and distrust across multiple domains (e.g., politics and health) and examine how these beliefs
correlate with attitudes and beliefs about the coronavirus crisis and government response to it. 2) Understand
how citizens process COVID-19-related misinformation. 3) Test the effectiveness of interventions designed to
debunk misperceptions about the pandemic. We will use representative surveys with embedded experiments
in the UK, Germany and Italy that will also allow us to consider the role of country context. Our findings will
have important implications for policy responses to public health crises. They will also advance our theoretical
understanding of misperceptions and the conditions under which they can be corrected.
