Partisan reasoning in a high stakes environment: Assessing partisan informational gaps on COVID-19
Erik Peterson and Shanto Iyengar
Using a survey conducted in July 2020, we establish a divide in the news sources partisans prefer for information about the COVID-19 pandemic and observe partisan disagreements in beliefs about the virus. These divides persist when respondents face financial costs for incorrectly answering questions.
Studying mis- and disinformation in Asian diasporic communities: The need for critical transnational research beyond Anglocentrism
Sarah Nguyễn, Rachel Kuo, Madhavi Reddi, Lan Li and Rachel E. Moran
Drawing on preliminary research about the spread of mis- and disinformation across Asian diasporic communities, we advocate for qualitative research methodologies that can better examine historical, transnational, multilingual, and intergenerational information networks. Using examples of case studies from Vietnam, Taiwan, China, and India, we discuss research themes and challenges including legacies of multiple imperialisms, nationalisms, and geopolitical tensions as root causes of mis- and disinformation; difficulties in data collection due to private and closed information networks, language translation and interpretation; and transnational dimensions of information infrastructures and media platforms.
Hide and seek: The connection between false beliefs and perceptions of government transparency
Mathieu Lavigne, Éric Bélanger, Richard Nadeau, Jean-François Daoust and Erick Lachapelle
This research examines how false beliefs shape perceptions of government transparency in times of crisis. Measuring transparency perceptions using both closed- and open-ended questions drawn from a Canadian panel survey, we show that individuals holding false beliefs about COVID-19 are more likely to have negative perceptions of government transparency.
A story of (non)compliance, bias, and conspiracies: How Google and Yandex represented Smart Voting during the 2021 parliamentary elections in Russia
Mykola Makhortykh, Aleksandra Urman and Mariëlle Wijermars
On 3 September 2021, the Russian court forbade Google and Yandex to display search results for “Smart Voting,” the query referring to a tactical voting project by the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. To examine whether the two search engines complied with the court order, we collected top search outputs for the query from Google and Yandex.
Ridiculing the “tinfoil hats:” Citizen responses to COVID-19 misinformation in the Danish facemask debate on Twitter
Nicklas Johansen, Sara Vera Marjanovic, Cathrine Valentin Kjaer, Rebekah Brita Baglini and Rebecca Adler-Nissen
We study how citizens engage with misinformation on Twitter in Denmark during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that misinformation regarding facemasks is not corrected through counter-arguments or fact-checking. Instead, many tweets rejecting misinformation use humor to mock misinformation spreaders, whom they pejoratively label wearers of “tinfoil hats.”