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Conspiracy Beliefs Linked to Selective Media Exposure: Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and Exposure to Media in Iraq

Haitham Numan

This paper study the relationship between believing in conspiracy theories and selective exposure to topics and media, aiming to expand on recent research suggesting that undergraduate students who have a high rate of conspiracist views tend to exposure social media messages that promote their conspiracy theories. This study surveyed a sample using the psychometric assessment of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale GCBS, the most widely used measure of the general belief in the conspiracy. The study found that undergraduate students had a large scale of belief in conspiracy theories and that there were more believers among women than men. We found that 67.97 % of them tend to use social media to research the pandemic and discover conspiracy theories. Our research further showed that most conspiracies that attracted students were ones that stated the reasons for the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of global conflict, like an attack between hidden international powers as part of an international war, or as a result of the US-China competition.