This study explores the relationship between political ideology and integrative complexity in terms of COVID-19 news coverage. Briefly, integrative complexity is a psycholinguistic construct that examines cognitive structure. Based on a sample of COVID-19 news articles sourced from liberal, moderate, and conservative news networks, the results show liberal and moderate networks displayed higher complexity scores than conservative networks. The results further confirm a complexity pattern seen in previous research — liberals and moderates tend to demonstrate more complex rhetoric than conservatives. Moreover, the conservative networks’ lower scores may be explained by the predominance of misinformation in their coverage of COVID-19.

本研究探讨了 COVID-19 新闻报道方面的政治意识形态与综合复杂性之间的关系。简而言之，综合复杂性是一种检查认知结构的心理语言学结构。基于来自自由派、温和派和保守派新闻网络的 COVID-19 新闻文章样本，结果显示自由派和温和派网络的复杂性得分高于保守派网络。结果进一步证实了之前研究中出现的复杂模式——自由派和温和派倾向于表现出比保守派更复杂的修辞。此外，保守网络的较低分数可能是由于他们对 COVID-19 的报道中错误信息占主导地位。