Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore.
Department of Media and Visual Arts, Koç University.
Health Commun. 2024 Apr;39(4):697-716. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2023.2181678. Epub 2023 Mar 6.
Neglecting the role of political bias in the public's perceptions of health authorities could be deceptive when studying potentially politicized COVID-19 conspiracy theories (CCTs); however, previous studies often treated health authorities as a single entity and did not distinguish between different types of CCTs. Drawing from motivated reasoning theory, we investigate the politically motivated nature of CCTs by examining their associations with individuals' media reliance, party identification, conspiratorial mentality, and importantly, trust in (politicized or independent) health authorities. In a national survey conducted in late 2020 ( = 2,239) in Turkey, a heavily polarized context, we found that not accounting for political identities shown in CCTs and health authorities could be misleading. While those with a strong conspiracy mentality were more likely to endorse all types of CCTs, party identification and trust in different types of health authorities led people to believe in certain CCTs aligning with their political attitudes. The influence of media reliance on CCTs depended on the level of trust in health authorities, again suggestive of the influence of political partialities.
当研究可能具有政治色彩的 COVID-19 阴谋论 (CCTs) 时，忽视政治偏见在公众对卫生当局看法中的作用可能具有欺骗性；然而，以前的研究通常将卫生当局视为一个单一实体，并且没有区分不同类型的 CCTs。本研究从动机推理理论出发，通过考察 CCTs 与个体对媒体的依赖、党派认同、阴谋心态的关联，以及重要的是，对（政治化或独立）卫生当局的信任，来研究 CCTs 的政治动机性质。在 2020 年末在土耳其进行的一项全国性调查（ = 2,239）中，在一个两极分化严重的背景下，我们发现，如果不考虑 CCTs 和卫生当局中表现出的政治身份，可能会产生误导。虽然那些具有强烈阴谋心态的人更有可能认可所有类型的 CCTs，但党派认同和对不同类型卫生当局的信任使人们相信与他们政治态度一致的某些 CCTs。对媒体的依赖对 CCTs 的影响取决于对卫生当局的信任程度，这再次表明了政治偏见的影响。
