Unpacking COVID ‐19 and conspiracy theories in the UK black community
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Abstract
Objectives
Conspiracy theories are associated with significant COVID‐19 health consequences including lower engagement with protective behaviours. This study uses sensemaking theory, a process of constructing meanings through interpersonal exchanges that enable people to interpret their world to explain the theoretical process underlying the development of conspiratorial beliefs around COVID‐19 within Black African and Caribbean communities in the UK.
Design
Qualitative, in‐depth interviews were used.
Methods
Twenty‐eight members of the communities were recruited: semi‐structured interviews were analysed using grounded theory.
Results
Our findings provide an explanation of how an environment of crisis combined with current and historical mistrust, perceived injustice and inequality provided a context in which alternative conspiracy narratives could thrive. The nature of these conspiratorial beliefs made more sense to many of our respondent's than institutional sources (such as the UK Government). Critically, these alternative beliefs helped respondents shape their decision‐making, leading to non‐engagement with COVID protective behaviours.
Conclusions
We conclude that the uncertainty of the pandemic, combined with historical and contemporary perceived injustice and mistrust, and a lack of specific identity‐aligned messaging, created a perfect environment for conspiratorial sense‐making to thrive. This alternative sensemaking was inconsistent with the health‐protection messaging espoused by the Government. To ensure all groups in society are protected, and for health promotion messages to take purchase, the experiences of different target audiences must be taken into account, with sensemaking anchored in lived experience.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.12.22270438: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IACUC: After approval from the authors’ institutional ethics committee, initial contact was made with key individuals from a range of organisations, who then invited their members on our behalf.
Consent: We encouraged prospective participants to contact us directly to arrange an interview, upon which we secured informed written consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An …SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.12.22270438: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IACUC: After approval from the authors’ institutional ethics committee, initial contact was made with key individuals from a range of organisations, who then invited their members on our behalf.
Consent: We encouraged prospective participants to contact us directly to arrange an interview, upon which we secured informed written consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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