The curve not taken: Effects of COVID-19 international comparison news

PLoS One. 2022 Aug 11;17(8):e0271041. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271041. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

International news can inform people not only about what is happening in other countries, but also about how their own country could benefit from policies that have proved successful elsewhere. Specifically, international policy comparison news, or news that compares the policies of two or more countries on the same issue, is a potentially important but underutilized and understudied form of news content. We use an experiment to test effects of exposure to news comparing the COVID-19 pandemic policies of the U.S. versus South Korea, and find that this increases knowledge of policy differences between the two countries, support for adopting similar policies in the U.S., presidential blame for the severity of the pandemic in the U.S., and trust in health experts. On most outcomes, these effects did not vary across political party lines, a particularly encouraging result given the polarized nature of policy debates on this issue.

MeSH terms

  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • Humans
  • Pandemics
  • Public Policy
  • Republic of Korea / epidemiology
  • Trust

Grants and funding

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.