Does Social Media Foster COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories?

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Nearly every social media platform increased people's beliefs in conspiracy theories, except one—and you're on it. ScottAMcGreal explains.

People who believed in one tended to also believe in the others, even though these would appear to contradict each other. This is in line with previous findings that believers in conspiracy theories will simultaneously accept contradictory theories.

However, when they looked at the results for individual countries, they found that the effects were significant only in certain countries but not others, although these varied depending on the platform. For example, the negative effect of Twitter on conspiracy theory beliefs was significant in five countries. In comparison, the positive effects of Facebook and YouTube on such beliefs were significant in six countries each, although not the same ones.

In contrast, Twitter is a public forum in which people are more likely to be exposed to dissenting views, and misinformation may be subject to more scrutiny that allows it to be more readily corrected with fact checks. However, these reasons are unlikely to apply to YouTube, which is not as socially oriented as Facebook.

 

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ScottAMcGreal Yay Twitter!

ScottAMcGreal A bit misleading. All formats do, just some less than others.

ScottAMcGreal Good old twitter

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