COVID19, Media and Trust in Stockholm

The goal of this research project is to investigate and illustrate how issues of trust in, and uses of, sources of information – from mainstream news outlets to municipalities to social groups to social media platforms – among Stockholm residents may have impacted the early spread of information about COVID-19 to at-risk groups in districts of Stockholm heavily impacted by the pandemic.

The project will also look at the extent to which these various communication forms did (or did not) leverage the advantages afforded by synergy to amplify the spread of such information.

The purpose, thus, is to offer an understanding of how information does (or does not) spread during a public health crises, which channels hold (or do not hold) trust, and how the interplay of various communicative forms (face-to-face, social media, journalism, municipal) in the information “ecosystem” functioned during the current COVID-19 crisis, and might be adjusted in a future crisis in order to increase efficacy and impact.

Using a combination of surveys, interviews and content analysis, the proposed project will be a first step toward understanding the role of (various forms of) media during the COVID-19 outbreak in Stockholm.