Understanding experiences of minority beliefs

To increase its understanding of how and why people develop minority beliefs in an online context, Ofcom commissioned Ipsos to conduct 35 face-to-face interviews with people who hold minority beliefs on one or more of three key topics: climate change, the Russia/Ukraine conflict and health protection.

‘Minority beliefs’ refers to views on topics that are not widely held by the UK general population. It is more inclusive than other terms (such as mis/disinformation) because it does not make a judgement about those that hold these beliefs. 

We took an open and exploratory approach to understand the role of online communications platforms in the formation and development of minority beliefs on these three key topics, how and why people developed these views, the relationship between minority beliefs and media literacy, and what impact minority beliefs had on people.

There was a great deal of variability in the views and experiences of people we spoke to. Some common themes we identified include:

• Participants tended to see themselves as occupying a middle ground between ‘mainstream’ and ‘extreme’ views.
• Content on online communications platforms was rarely the starting point for beliefs, although it did act as a catalyst. Instead, introduction through friends and family or significant life events were often triggers for participants’ minority beliefs.
• Participants were cautious about sharing content around their minority beliefs and there was some evidence of people moving from public to more private online communications platforms.
• The desire to be an active participant in their own learning about topics drove participants to online communications platforms.
• Minority beliefs sometimes impacted participants’ professional or personal relationships. 
• Participants often took a default sceptical stance towards evidence presented to support orthodox positions, and showed recognised critical analysis skills.
• Some participants described relying on other users to ‘debunk’ information on online communications platforms.
• Eye-witness testimony or footage was given higher legitimacy by participants than other forms of evidence.

We conducted 35 90-minute in-person depth interviews complemented with 7-day media diaries of information participants saw on two of the three minority belief topics.

To identify those with a minority belief on any of the three subjects, potential respondents were firstly asked to self-identify as having different views to the majority on the topic. Second, the screener asked potential participants to rate the extent to which they believed a statement relating to each topic to be true, using a 10-point scale. Those scoring 0-4 on the scale were included in the sample.

The statement for each topic was:

• Health protection: Vaccinations are generally safe. 
• Climate change: Human activity is contributing to climate change, which, if it continues at the current rate, is likely to be disastrous for human civilisation. 
• Russia/Ukraine conflict: Ukraine is a sovereign state which is being invaded. 

Our sample was developed to ensure we had representation of specific subgroups of interest: older people, people who spoke English as a second language, those with low confidence in using the internet, and those with low trust in government. The sample was also designed to represent a spread of key demographic characteristics: geographic distribution, gender, age, social grade and ethnicity.

Fieldwork took place 2 March to 5 April 2023.

A link to download the full report is here.