Socio-demographic profile and political attitudes of groups for and against limiting the free circulation of information during the pandemic

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has produced not only a terrible sanitary crisis but also several problems related to the circulation of disinformation in the context of hybrid and increasingly fragmented media systems. In this work, we analyze a polemical question included in the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) survey conducted in April about the appro-priateness of limiting free circulation of information to avoid diffusion of fake news and disinformation. The goals are to (1) analyze the sociodemographic traits of those in favor of limiting the free circulation of information, and (2) explore their general political preferences and affiliations, and the association with attitudes regarding freedom of information. The results obtained through a quantitative methodological approach based on contingency tables and standardized residuals indicate that the most common sociodemographic profile of those in favor of limiting the flow of information is the following: young women (between 18 and 25 years) with secondary education who live in small municipalities and belong to the lower social class. Moreover, the findings illustrate that there is a significant statistical association between supporting the limitation of information and different indicators of supporting the Socialist government: voting and sympathizing with the Socialist Party, self-location in the extreme left, and trusting both the central government management of the crisis and the leadership of Pedro Sánchez.