Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation in Andalusia. Executive Report 2019

Abstract

This research was conducted as part of the 5th Wave of the Citizen Panel for Social Research in Andalusia, PIE 201710E018 [Panel Ciudadano PACIS, IESA-CSIC, www.panelpacis.net]. Our work is based on the administration of a survey to a representative sample of Andalusians. The sample was composed by 1,103 participants. The survey universe of this research was defined as all individual residents in Andalusia aged 18 or over. For the data collection, the sample was selected from among the individuals who are part of the PACIS panel.The objectives of this Executive Report are, specifically to identify if Andalusians have generic beliefs in conspiracies, to identify if Andalusians share and support specific beliefs about some conspiracies that have been divulged, with left, right and neutral orientations, and to find out the degree of extension of these beliefs in conspiracies in Andalusia, that is, how many people are estimated to believe in unfounded information.

This executive report is part of the work developed within the framework of the research project: “Teorías de la conspiración y desinformación” [Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation], which won a competition to conduct a survey on this topic in the 5th Wave of the Citizen Panel for Social Research in Andalusia (EP-1707, PIE 201710E018, IESA/CSIC, www.panelpacis.net). Furthermore, this work falls under the COST Action (H2020) on “Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories” (COMPACT, 2016-2020), funded by the European Union’s Framework Programme Horizon 2020. From this COST Action emerge the Project PiCOM, Political Ideology and Conspiracy Mentality”, in which this report is framed.