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Category: Project

Description: Trust in science and experts is extremely important in times of epidemics to ensure compliance with public health measures. Yet little is known about how this trust evolves while an epidemic is underway. Understanding these processes is vital for policy makers who face rapidly evolving situations while preventing small-scale outbreaks from escalating into large-scale emergencies. In this paper, we seek to understand the dynamics of trust in science and experts in real-time as the high-impact epidemic of Coronavirus (COVID-19) unfolds in Italy, by drawing on digital trace and survey data collected from three online platforms: Twitter, Telegram, and Facebook.