Thursday, April 30, 2020

Survey: Americans Need Breaks From COVID-19 News

Americans continue to pay close attention to news about the coronavirus outbreak both nationally and locally. In doing so, they rely on a broad mix of media, government and other providers of news. 

But the continuous news churn has had an impact, according to a new analysis of data from Pew Research Center's Election News Pathways project

About seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say they need to take breaks from news about the outbreak, and 43% say it leaves them feeling worse emotionally. Half of Americans say they find it difficult to determine what is true and not true about the outbreak and close to two-thirds of adults say they have seen at least some news and information about the coronavirus that seemed completely made-up. 

Within the rapid flow of news and information has been a stream of questionable claims related to treatments for or causes of COVID-19. 

The survey asked about six purported treatments or causes to get a sense of how widely they reached across the U.S. Of these, Americans were most likely to be familiar with the claim that the anti-malaria drug hydroxycholoroquine could be useful as a treatment: 44% have heard a lot about this. The new analysis stems from a survey of 10,139 U.S. adults who are members of the Center's American Trends Panel, conducted April 20-26, 2020. 

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