Political preferences, knowledge, and misinformation about COVID-19 : the case of Brazil
| العنوان: | Political preferences, knowledge, and misinformation about COVID-19 : the case of Brazil |
|---|---|
| المؤلفون: | Pedro Santos Mundim, Wladimir Gramacho, Mathieu Turgeon, John James Kennedy, Max Stabile |
| المصدر: | Repositório Institucional da UnB Universidade de Brasília (UnB) instacron:UNB Frontiers in Political Science, Vol 3 (2021) |
| بيانات النشر: | Frontiers, 2021. |
| سنة النشر: | 2021 |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: | Economic growth, knowledge, coronavirus, Context (language use), Public opinion, Scientific evidence, Preferências políticas, 03 medical and health sciences, Politics, 0302 clinical medicine, Political science, political preferences, 030212 general & internal medicine, Misinformation, 030304 developmental biology, 0303 health sciences, Government, business.industry, Polarization (politics), public health, COVID-19, Desinformação, partisanship, Elite, business, Covid-19 |
| الوصف: | The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a vast research agenda focusing on how citizens acquire knowledge about the virus and the health expert guidelines to protect themselves and their close ones against it. While many countries and regions have been accounted for, there still remains a substantial gap with respect to public opinion about the virus in Latin America, most notably in Brazil, which currently has the second highest in number of fatalities in the world. In this article, we employ a national survey of Brazilians (n = 2,771) to measure and explain knowledge and misinformation about the coronavirus and its illness, COVID-19. Our focus concerns the role of political preferences in a context of high elite polarization with a sitting government that has systematically downplayed the risks associated with the coronavirus and its illness. Our findings are clear: political preferences play a substantial role in explaining differences in knowledge about the coronavirus and COVID-19, more than conventional determinants of learning like motivation, ability, and opportunities. Specifically, we find that supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro—an avid science and COVID-19 denier—know significantly less about the coronavirus and its illness and are more likely to believe in a conspiracy theory that claims that the coronavirus was purposefully created in a Chinese laboratory to promote China's economic power, when compared to Brazilians who are less supportive of him and his government. Our findings carry important implications for how Brazilians take informational cues from political elites in that—even in a major event like a global pandemic—supporters of the president are as likely as ever to “follow their leader” and deny expert-backed scientific evidence. |
| URL الوصول: | https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_dedup___::4d5d788f4de8581a95b86110c810f222 https://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/42629 |
| حقوق: | OPEN |
| رقم الأكسشن: | edsair.doi.dedup.....4d5d788f4de8581a95b86110c810f222 |
| قاعدة البيانات: | OpenAIRE |
| الوصف غير متاح. |