In his State of the Union address, Pres. Joe Biden pleaded to “use this moment to reset. Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: a God-awful disease.”
A recent study shows there’s room for agreement on the coronavirus: nearly three-quarters of Americans, on both sides of the political aisle, believe that disinformation will prolong the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the Institute for Public Relations’ third-annual “Disinformation in Society Report,” 73 percent of respondents say that disinformation — which the study defines as “deliberately misleading or biased information” — is widespread about the coronavirus vaccine.
A few other findings from the study include:
70 percent believe that disinformation has a negative effect on society and well-being
71 percent said falsehoods exacerbate political polarization
73 percent feel that disinformation undermines election processes and 75 percent think deliberate attempts to mislead the public threaten democracy
What’s also noteworthy, especially for communication strategists, is while Republicans and Democrats differed in their trust of media outlets by as much as 40 percentage points, both sides agreed that local news sources are the most trustworthy.