The second PANCOPOP journal article has been published in Information, Communication & Society Journal titled ‘Have people ‘had enough of experts’? The impact of populism and pandemic misinformation on institutional trust in comparative perspective’. The paper explores the impact of populism and pandemic misinformation on institutional trust. Based on a survey in four countries, the findings show that people susceptible to misinformation beliefs as well as those displaying populist attitudes are significantly less likely to trust experts to handle a future health crisis. However, only in the US and Brazil, voting for populist leaders was linked with distrust expert institution, while in Poland and Serbia the association was positive – potentially reflecting the more science-led approach to pandemic by Poland and Serbia governments. Overall, the support for policies adopted by the government to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic was the strongest predictor of institutional trust with regards to future pandemic, both for political and expert institutions.
The article is available open access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2024.2413121
