Political News Monitoring and Questioning the Trustworthiness of News among Turkish University Students in the Infodemic COVID-19 Environment

The COVID-19 pandemic, declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020, has had a significant impact on daily practices worldwide. Governments implemented various strategies such as curfews, travel restrictions, and stay-at-home directives to mitigate the risks associated with the virus. In Turkey, most educational institutions transitioned to online tools, posing challenges for university students who faced educational obstacles and social isolation from their campuses. This study explores the effects of COVID-19 on university students’ interest in politics and their consumption of political news. It relies on data collected by the Yeditepe University Global Education and Culture Research and Application Center (KEKAM) for the “University Students’ Educational and Social Adaptation during the COVID-19 in Turkey” project. In this study, we investigated how university students, a relatively highly educated group, were affected by the infodemic environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis focused on university students’ consumption of political news, their interest in politics, and their propensity to question the reliability of news sources. We hypothesized that heightened news consumption would lead to interest in politics and greater skepticism regarding the credibility of news sources. Using a mixed-method approach that involved regression analyses and cartographic visualization, we found a positive relationship between increased news consumption and university students’ interest in politics. Additionally, students with higher levels of news consumption exhibited a greater tendency to question the reliability of news sources and information. These findings underscore the importance of critically evaluating information in an infodemic environment.