- The masses being forced to stay at their homes are trying to stay updated about the coronavirus pandemic.
- A recent study compares the trust and usage of a news source from traditional and digital media.
- And the usage of news received from a person’s social circle and other resources with its trust.
People are trying their best to achieve the most trustworthy news update about the coronavirus pandemic in these crises. GlobalWebIndex released a report comparing the percentage of what people said from where they received the news to the percentage what the masses say which source is the most trustworthy-one for the coronavirus updates.
According to the report, 60% of the people watch news channels broadcasted on TV for getting updates about the coronavirus while only 44% consider it to be a trustworthy source of news for the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case of news bulletins on TV, 45% of the population watched them stay updated about the virus while 32% said that they found the news bulletins to be most trustworthy.
55% and 50% of the masses used news websites and government updates for coronavirus-related information respectively, and 32% and 49% considered news websites and government updates the most trustworthy sources. When it comes social media platforms, 47% depend on it for news consumption and only 14% of users consider them the most trustworthy which might be due to the surged spread of the coronavirus misinformation over these apps.
31%, 21% and 12% received updates by having a conversation with friends or family members, from a group chat on any texting app, and from their employers respectively. The trustworthiness of these sources was recorded to be 11%, 8% and 8% respectively.
The report further highlights that 29% of people consider receiving updates about the virus from health organizations while 34% call this source most authentic. In this modern age of technology, there are still people using newspapers and radio to receive updates and according to the report by GlobalWebIndex, 20% use newspapers for the said need while 14% of people use a radio. 16% of people thought of the newspapers to be most authentic while 10% considered radio the most authentic source.
It seems that updates from brands and podcasts are also used for this purpose by the masses and 9% of the people received updates about the situation from brands and only 6% said that they consider the updates from brands to be authentic. Talking about the podcasts, 6% population used them as a news source for the COVID-19 updates and 4% considered them to be authentic.
From the report, it is evident that people use different sources for getting COVID-19 updates but it is recommended to receive updates from a source that provides updates from authentic government and health officials to avoid consuming any coronavirus misinformation.
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