Who and why: a study of British distrust in the government and media during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique context for studying the spread of conspiratorial beliefs within the general population and their role in mediating compliance with government guidance. Here, we apply multivariate and machine learning methods to analyse data from tens of thousands of members of the British public at 6-monthly timepoints during the COVID-19 pandemic. We report that distrust and conspiratorial beliefs significantly predict non-compliant behaviours and covary with sociodemographic variables, being most prevalent for disadvantaged and minority groups. Free text analyses reveal that perceptions of corruption, cronyism, disputing lockdown motivations and the potential of COVID-19 being a lab-leaked bioweapon were common topics motivating non-compliance, with the prevalence and distribution of such beliefs evolving as the pandemic progressed. We propose that survey data could be analysed this way to identify current topics of distrust and map them to demographic variables, enabling the most relevant arguments to be tailored for each individual.