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“The Negative Effects of False Balance in Media Coverage. Influencing the Public's Attitude Towards COVID-19 Vaccination” Cover

“The Negative Effects of False Balance in Media Coverage. Influencing the Public's Attitude Towards COVID-19 Vaccination”

By: Raluca Mureşan  
Open Access
|Dec 2021

Abstract

Lack of trust in science and official information, misinformation and conspiracy theories play an important role in increasing vaccine hesitancy and disseminating the solely scientific evidence is not enough to influence people's attitudes when faced with contradictory information. The media plays an important role in disseminating information about vaccination, but journalists can negatively influence the public's attitude towards COVID-19 vaccination when they inadequate balances the coverage of this topic. The false balance occurs when in case of a strong consensus among experts about a subject, based on solid scientific evidence, an equal importance is given to a minority of experts who argue otherwise, creating a false impression that there are some uncertainties about the subject or that the evidence is not strong enough.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/saec-2021-0013 | Journal eISSN: 2601-1182 | Journal ISSN: 1221-2245
Language: English, Romanian, German, French
Page range: 5 - 14
Published on: Dec 22, 2021
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2021 Raluca Mureşan, published by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.