Introduction:

In global health crises the media is important for reporting on important issues to the population.

Objective:

To characterize and find associations of perceived fear or exaggeration conveyed by the media in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods:

Analytical and multicenter cross-sectional study. A virtual survey was conducted among 4009 people, in 17 cities of Peru, from March 15-20, 2020. The instrument, previously validated, evaluated three factors: the exaggeration of the media; the fear generated and the communication coming from health personnel, family members and friends. Relationship coefficients and p-values were calculated through the use of generalized linear models, with Gaussian family and identity linkage function. Values of p <0.05 were considered statistically significant.

Results:

Social networks (64%) and television (57%) were perceived by all participants as exaggerating information; also, television (43%) and social networks (41%) increased the perception of fear. As for their family/friends, they perceived that they exaggerated the situation (39%) and generated fear (25%). In the multivariate analysis, women (p<0.001), those who had completed high school (p=0.023), were university students (p=0.037) and those with a postgraduate degree (p=0.002) had a lower total score of fear and perception of exaggeration.

Conclusions:

The perception of exaggeration and fear generation in the population were mostly caused by television and social networks.

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