From skepticism to motivated reasoning: How do corona protesters strategically use scientific uncertainty on the example of COVID-19 protests in Germany?

This study explores the dynamics of how corona protesters in Germany communicate scientific uncertainty related to the pandemic. The research puzzle is grounded in the assumption that political actors, including non-institutionalized ones, exploit scientific evidence strategically in their communications, thereby blurring the lines between scientific and political communication (Scheufele, 2014). We focus on non-institutionalized political actors, i.e., the movement of COVID-19 protesters in Germany, which includes far-right groups, the Querdenken movement, and conspiracy theorists. Based on research into motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990; Druckman, 2012) and selective sharing (Liang, 2018), which involves a bias towards confirming pre-existing beliefs by emphasizing supportive information and disregarding contradictory information, we expect that corona protesters, given their initial anti-science attitudes, would strategically communicate scientific uncertainty after controversial events to mobilize the supporters. We specifically analyze the reactions of non-institutionalized actors regarding the suspension of the use of the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine and decisions made by political institutions related to lockdown policies based on uncertain simulations (with a specific focus on reactions towards inconsistent lockdown policies of the German government based on uncertain simulations, i.e., the Easter lockdown in 2021, and Sweden’s no-lockdown policy). Data and Methods. Our analysis is based on a corpus of about two million messages published in 180 public channels on the Telegram platform posted by non-institutionalized political actors (far-right, the Querdenken, and conspiracists). The focus on this platform is due to the process of de-platforming (Zehring & Domahidi, 2023) that populists and the far-rights are experiencing from the mainstream social media corporations. We exploit the à la carte on text (conText) embedding regression framework (Rodriguez, Spirling & Stewart, 2023) based on pre-trained language models. We investigate how the coronavirus protesters disregard scientific evidence and point to science only when scientific uncertainty becomes a public issue to highlight contradictions in scientific assessments and government actions regarding the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the strategic use of scientific communication by non-institutionalized political actors who question existing institutions and practices of technocratic problem-solving. References: Druckman, J. N. (2012). The politics of motivation. Critical Review, 24(2), 199-216. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological bulletin, 108(3), 480. Hai Liang, Broadcast Versus Viral Spreading: The Structure of Diffusion Cascades and Selective Sharing on Social Media, Journal of Communication, Volume 68, Issue 3, June 2018, Pages 525–546, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy006 Rordriguez P., Sprirling A., Brandon S. M. Embedding Regression: Models for Context-Specific Description and Inference. American Political Science Review. 2023;117(4):1255-1274. doi:10.1017/S0003055422001228 Scheufele, D. A. (2014). Science communication as political communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(supplement_4), 13585-13592. Zehring, M., & Domahidi, E. (2023). German Corona Protest Mobilizers on Telegram and Their Relations to the Far Right: A Network and Topic Analysis. Social Media + Society, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231155106