Official Lies: Mistrust in Media & Political Information and Conspiracy Narratives in the Online Civic Discourse of Global Crises

Crisis times are connected with an increased level of fear and uncertainty, emphasising the importance of online discussion environments, which can provide participants with opportunities to share their frustrations and find communities with which they can share such fears and their political views. Both positive (uncertainty reduction) and negative (higher societal division, conspiracy narratives spreading) consequences are connected with such online discursive communities. Social media gives rise to the rapid dissemination of information, including false information, particularly during global crises. Conspiracies may be trusted more due to the urgent need for information, which might exacerbate the situation and cause unnecessary panic. In our paper, we aim to analyse what metanarratives help Czech citizens deal with unexpected crisis situations, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the consequences of these crises for the discussants’ economic situation and autonomy. We analysed online discussions on Facebook pages of mainstream TV news to identify common patterns across both crises. We were specifically interested in how possible societal division and power inequalities are reflected in the dominant online metanarratives and in what forms and context the discussants express the perceived economic and social uncertainties. Our focus is on exploring to what extent populist rhetoric, such as the division between the people and the elites, distrust in official information and conspiracy theories, play a role in building perceptions of ongoing situations. Our study focused on the public Facebook pages of two major Czech TV stations, the ČT24, a public service broadcaster, and TN.CZ, a commercial medium. We collected data during the first wave of each crisis (COVID-19: 2020; Russo-Ukrainian war 2022) and one year after. We have selected seven top-performing Facebook posts related to crisis per discussion arena and a time slot for each crisis, sorted comments with the highest engagement, and coded 30 relevant comments regarding our research aim at each FB post. 1,680 comments in total were analysed, employing the grounded theory's open and axial coding procedures. Preliminary findings indicate that online discussants use repetitive metanarratives to articulate their low trust in information distributed by the media and political actors. People express their worries regarding the impact of governmental policies in crisis times on the domestic economy and on the personal freedom or opportunities of vulnerable members of society (children, economically marginalised, etc.). The media are frequent targets of dissatisfaction represented in the metanarratives as part of the ruling elites misinforming the citizens. Conspiracy theories appear in the comments across both types of crises (health and security) as expressions of civic dissatisfaction with the government measures perceived as the rule over the people, thus supporting discourses of civil disobedience. People claim that they need to take things into their own hands to protect themselves and their vulnerable. The implications of these repetitive narratives activated during crisis times for policymakers regarding crisis communication, as well as interpretations of the possible sources of low trust in official information, are further discussed.