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Description: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous theories have accompanied us about the origin and supposed purpose of the novel virus. As the duration of the pandemic increased, so did the visibility of conspiracy myths in public discourse. Reports about conspiracy myths, about demonstrations or interviews with COVID-deniers may have led people to misjudge the distribution of opinion in society. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between news coverage of conspiracy myths and perceptions of consensus in society. In the past, the development of the Gateway Belief Model has shown that the assessment of consensus among scientists and in the social environment has a decisive influence on one's own attitudes and behavior (van der Linden et al., 2019). However, since the model does not make assumptions about the origin of the perception of consensus, this study focuses on extending the model and adapting it to the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Gateway Belief Model, misperceptions of perceived consensus are a “gateway” cognition as they influence individual beliefs and actions (van der Linden et al., 2019). For example, if people mistakenly believe that the majority of scientists or the majority of their social environment do not believe in human-caused climate change, then they are likely to not believe in it either and are much less likely to perceive climate change as a serious risk or support policies to reduce it. The model basis on the assumption that consensus can serve as a decision heuristic when there is no motivation to elaborate on a message, since it can usually be assumed that the majority is correct in its assessments (Chaiken, 2014; van der Linden, 2015). The effect that perceived scientific and social consensus has on our attitudes and behavior has been demonstrated in numerous studies (Bode et al., 2020; van der Linden et al., 2015, 2017). However, the Gateway Belief Model does not provide information on how the perceived scientific or social consensus is formed by an individual. To this end, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann developed the spiral of silence theory, which is based on the assumption that public opinion is partly assessed through the mass media. Noelle-Neumann explains the human interest in public opinion by the inherent fear of isolation in humans (Noelle-Neumann & Petersen, 2004). Isolation must be expected if a person's opinion or behavior differs from that of others (Noelle‐Neumann, 1974). To prevent isolation, people observe their social environment and the mass media in order to behave socially adaptive (Noelle-Neumann, 1991). Thus, mass media provide a normative orientation. However, the theory does not answer the question of how mass media convey cues about the climate of opinion and how these cues affect our perception of public opinion. The persuasive press inference, developed by Gunther (1998), could provide an answer to this question. Gunther’s theory proposes that people make judgments about public opinion by drawing inferences from the general content of press coverage. Therefore, when people perceive a positive tenor in the news, they estimate the opinion in the population more favorably (Zerback, 2016). Hence, the tenor of the news is a cue for the viewer to assess public opinion. Interestingly, however, it could be observed that people evaluate the tenor differently (Arpan & Raney, 2003; Hansen & Kim, 2011; Vallone et al., 1985). The perception of the tenor depends on individual attitudes (Feldman, 2011). When people are asked to assess the tenor of a news story, people who have an established stance on a particular topic often perceive the tenor contrary to their own opinion (Hansen & Kim, 2011). This phenomenon is called the hostile media effect. Furthermore, Gunther claims that people assume that media coverage has a powerful impact on other people (1998). This premise is based on the so-called third person effect, which states that people overestimate the effect of media on other people’s attitudes and behaviors (Davison, 1983). Consequently, Gunther’s main assertion is that “people assume that what mass media are saying today must be what the public will be thinking tomorrow” (Gunther, 1998, p. 487). But not only the tenor of news reports can have an influence on the assessment of consensus in society, but also the frequency with which certain topics are displayed in the news (Windzio & Kleimann, 2006). “To draw an audience’s attention and make the news a more lucrative business, news producers lean toward sensationalism and take full advantage of the drama embedded in social conflict […]” (Han & Yzer, 2020, p. 71). Placing the focus on audience-friendly content, however, can bias the perception of a viewer as the frequency with which such content is broadcast is no indication of how often something actually happens or what the distribution of opinions actually looks like. Nevertheless, viewers draw conclusions from news content that also affect attitudes. In the proposed study, we want to examine the effects discussed above in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic due to the current importance of the crisis. The aim of the study is to investigate the influence of news coverage on individual perceptions of consensus in society and through that on attitudes and behavior. In order to test this influence, we adapted the Gateway Belief Model to the new context and added media coverage as a possible influence on perceived consensus in society (see Figure 1), focusing on the spread of conspiracy theories through news coverage. Figure 1 illustrates the main hypotheses (H1 to H3) of the study. Throughout the pandemic, people were confronted with conflicting opinions about COVID. The news reported differing opinions from scientists, politicians, and residents. Anti-COVID demonstrations and extreme opinions were also the subject of reports. These reports could have led to a misperception of the distribution of opinions among the viewers. The first studies assume that about 10% of the German population endorses COVID-related conspiracy beliefs (Kuhn et al., 2021). However, excessive coverage of COVID deniers, demonstrations etcetera may have created the impression that the population is more polarized in its views than is actually the case. This could make people believe that the consensus in society is lower than it actually is (H1). For example, getting exposed to conspiracy theories and conspiracy friendly opinions over and over again in the news could make people belief that a larger percentage of people must belief in conspiracy theories instead of a scientific consensus. This perception could then also reduce risk perceptions and efficacy beliefs (H2), as expressed by many conspiracy theories. Lowered risk perceptions can negatively influence compliance with behavioral measures (H3), because they are deemed irrelevant or unnecessary if COVID is not considered a substantial threat. The study tests these hypotheses via an online experiment, where exposure to conspiracy theories is manipulated by presenting different news reports (focusing on conspiracy theories, scientific or neutral reports about the pandemic), and assessing subsequent risk appraisal and behavioral compliance intentions.