Unraveling the Role of Media in Conspiracy Thinking

There has been a growing academic interest in conspiracies and conspiracy thinking in recent years, cutting across various disciplines and spanning diverse social and cultural. While conspiracy thinking has been a subject of examination by researchers for a long time, the interest in it has significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, accompanied by uncertainty and the search for any knowledge available. Such periods provide fertile ground for disseminating conspiracy narratives, often interconnected with populist and anti-establishment attitudes, taking advantage of the increased vulnerability of citizens with profound implications for democratic societies. Therefore, it is crucial to comprehend the factors related to conspiracy thinking, a general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories, and see events and situations in the surrounding world resulting from conspiracies. Interest in understanding the nature of this thinking naturally emerged primarily within psychology and related disciplines. Consequently, there is limited knowledge about its determinants or implications in other areas, and there is especially a notable gap in the understanding of the role of media and related practices. This study fills this gap and investigates the effect of media, political, and socio-demographic predictors on conspiracy thinking by utilizing representative survey data from 2,340 Czech adults (collected in December 2022). Our findings suggest that certain media practices, such as the frequency of news consumption, engagement with alternative media, and usage of the internet and social networking sites for news, are not strongly associated with conspiracy thinking in Czechia. Instead, the broader aspects of media engagement play a pivotal role. Trust in the media and trust in journalists emerge as key media factors related to thinking less conspiratively. Higher trust in government and state institutions and trust in politicians is associated with lower conspiracy thinking. Additionally, the research sheds light on the interaction between journalistic and political trusts. These findings underscore the importance of comprehensively addressing media and political factors, emphasizing their interconnected impact on understanding and mitigating conspiracy thinking.