Does it matter what you watch? Social attitudes, media objectivity, and frequency of informing as predictors of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs Tijana Karić1, Janko Međedović Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research, Belgrade THIS VERSION HAS NOT BEEN PEER-REVIWED. In this study, we hypothesized that traditionalist social attitudes (conservatism, religiousness, and authoritarianism) significantly predict COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, as well as conspiracy mentality in general. We also hypothesized that these relationships are mediated by the objectivity of the media individuals inform themselves from, and the frequency of informing. The sample consisted of 341 participants from Serbia (mean age 33.51 years), 40.5% women. We measured authoritarianism, social conservatism, religiousness, conspiracy mentality, media objectivity, frequency of informing, and two sets of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs: Harmless virus and Hiding information. The results revealed that conservatism predicts all three outcome variables, authoritarianism only COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and religiousness only beliefs that the virus is harmless. Media objectivity does not mediate these relationships. Frequency of informing is a significant mediator only in a relationship between authoritarianism and all outcome variables, indicating that the role of seeking more information is in the function of reducing threat perceived by more authoritarian individuals. Additionally, the study reveals that media objectivity 1
[email protected] may not be important for reducing conspiracy beliefs, but rather media credibility. These potential explanations should be further explored. Keywords: COVID-19, authoritarianism, conservatism, religiousness, media Word count: 6761 Introduction The importance of different aspects of media reporting has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The so-called infodemic (WHO, 2020) has accompanied this world event since the very beginning (Bridgman et al., 2020).