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Eric Merkley Profile picture
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29 Apr, 5 tweets, 4 min read
πŸ‘€ Awesome to see my article with @PeejLoewen online at @NatureHumBehav (!) In it we highlight the tremendous importance of anti-intellectualism in the public's response to #COVID19 in πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦ Check it out! πŸ‘‡ 1/

nature.com/articles/s4156…
I wrote a blog post for @nature Portfolio's "Behind the Paper" channel that goes into some of the background of the article and highlights the key findings 2/

socialsciences.nature.com/posts/anti-int…
You can also find more discussion of the article's findings in my 🧡 below 3/

View-only link to the Nature Human Behaviour article here: rdcu.be/cjz7w

Ungated pre-print here: osf.io/agm57/ 4/
cc: @munkschool @PubPolicy_Munk @UofT @researchuoft @UofT_PolSci

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More from @EricMerkley

Eric Merkley Profile picture
17 Mar
πŸš¨πŸ“’"Anti-Intellectualism and the Mass Public’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic" (with @PeejLoewen) now coming soon to Nature Human Behaviour!🀯Check it out!πŸ‘€ 1/

osf.io/agm57/
Lot of cool stuff in this paper. We show that anti-intellectualism (AI) was strongly associated with COVID-19 risk perceptions (-), social distancing compliance (-), COVID-19 misbeliefs (+), and news attention (-) as the pandemic unfolded in πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦ beyond effects of ideology 2/
We use panel data to link AI to within-respondent dynamics in mask adoption as expert advice changed on this question in April and May of 2020 3/
Read 7 tweets
Eric Merkley Profile picture
21 May 20
🚨New pre-print 🚨by @PeejLoewen and I out of the @MediaEcosystem project on how prospective economic cost reduces social distancing expectations. We think this is an important one. Bear with me for a long-ish thread πŸ‘‡1/

#SocSciResearch #Covid_19

osf.io/yht9v/
Citizens have been asked to take a variety of costly actions to protect themselves and others (i.e. social/physical distancing). This behaviour is essential in the absence of #TestAndTrace and a mass produced vaccine. How sustainable is this? We need more research 2/
We see public health during a pandemic as a public good to which citizens can make a costly contribution by socially distancing themselves. Participation will influenced, in part, by its marginal cost and benefit, and by expectations of other people's behaviour 3/
Read 18 tweets
Eric Merkley Profile picture
14 May 20
🚨New pre-print 🚨by the @MediaEcosystem team on anti-intellectualism and information preferences during the #COVID19 pandemic. Check it out! πŸ‘€πŸ‘‡#SocSciResearch #scicomm 1/

osf.io/agm57/
Building on work by @AlbertsonB2 and @sgadarian, we expect that individuals will have preference for both expert information related to #COVID19 and #COVID19 news in general. But, that these effects will be weaker among those with higher levels of anti-intellectual sentiment 2/
We use two survey experiments on a pair of large, nationally representative samples of Canadians (N~2,500) to show that 1) citizens prefer expert information, and this effect weakens among those with high levels of anti-intellectualism; 3/
Read 7 tweets
Eric Merkley Profile picture
8 Apr 20
Not yet settled. See here for instance, where I validate a Lexicoder-based tone measure using vector autoregression for analyses meant to detect partisan media bias in economic news dynamics. I find the opposite. 1/

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
Ditto here in a working paper with @alan_jacobs1 @jsmatthews99 and @HicksTM. Again the aim was to validate the tone measure, but this time for analyses on class bias in news media responsiveness. News media lead, rather than follow sentiment 2/ osf.io/preprints/soca…
We find a strong correlation between news tone and the fortunes of the affluent with much less responsiveness to those of the middle and lower class. This class bias is likely due to how traditional indicators of econ performance now better reflect the fortunes of the wealthy 3/
Read 6 tweets
Eric Merkley Profile picture
29 Aug 19
Presenting more dissertation work today at #APSA2019 (4pm, Marriott Harding). I argue that we need to pay more attention to the information environment to understand why public attitudes often diverge from consensus expert opinion. Another thread πŸ‘‡ [1/13] #SocSciResearch ImageImage
Many citizens learn about hard or technical political issues through the news media. However, we know that pathologies in news production generate superficial content that emphasizes novelty and drama. The news media may not often convey info about expert consensus [2/13]
And even when they do cover expert consensus, bias towards conflict and balance may lead journalists to cite contrarian experts (i.e. false balance) or polarizing political opponents that may confuse readers about expert consensus or prime them to resist it [3/13]
Read 14 tweets

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