HKS Shorenstein Center

We surveyed 19,058 individuals across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The survey was conducted on 10-26 July 2020 by PureSpectrum via an online, nonprobability sample, with state-level representative quotas for race/ethnicity, age, and gender (for methodological details on the other waves, see covidstates.org). In addition to balancing on these dimensions, we reweighted our data using demographic characteristics to match the U.S. population with respect to race/ethnicity, age, gender, education, and living in urban, suburban, or rural areas. This was the seventh in a series of surveys we have been conducting since April 2020, examining attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19 in the United States.

We surveyed 19,058 individuals across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The survey was conducted on 10-26 July 2020 by PureSpectrum via an online, nonprobability sample, with state-level representative quotas for race/ethnicity, age, and gender (for methodological details on the other waves, see covidstates.org). In addition to balancing on these dimensions, we reweighted our data using demographic characteristics to match the U.S. population with respect to race/ethnicity, age, gender, education, and living in urban, suburban, or rural areas. This was the seventh in a series of surveys we have been conducting since April 2020, examining attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19 in the United States.

In June and July 2020, we surveyed 37,325 individuals across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The two survey waves used in this report were conducted on 12-28 June and 10-26 July 2020 by PureSpectrum via an online, nonprobability sample, with state-level representative quotas for race/ethnicity, age, and gender (for methodological details on the other waves, see covidstates.org). In addition to balancing on these dimensions, we reweighted our data using demographic characteristics to match the U.S. population with respect to race/ethnicity, age, gender, education, and living in urban, suburban, or rural areas. This was part of a project including a series of large-scale surveys we have been conducting since April 2020, examining attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19 in the United States.

We surveyed 19,052 individuals across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The survey was conducted on 10-26 July 2020 by PureSpectrum via an online, nonprobability sample, with state-level representative quotas for race/ethnicity, age, and gender (for methodological details on the other waves, see covidstates.org). In addition to balancing on these dimensions, we reweighted our data using demographic characteristics to match the U.S. population with respect to race/ethnicity, age, gender, education, and living in urban, suburban, or rural areas. This was the seventh in a series of surveys we have been conducting since April 2020, examining attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19 in the United States.

We surveyed 20,333 individuals across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The survey was conducted on 2-15 May 2020 by PureSpectrum via an online, nonprobability sample, with state-level representative quotas for race/ethnicity, age, and gender. In addition to balancing on these dimensions, we reweighted our data using demographic characteristics.

We surveyed 18,132 individuals across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The survey was conducted on 16-31 May 2020 by PureSpectrum via an online, nonprobability sample, with state-level representative quotas for race/ethnicity, age, and gender. In addition to balancing on these dimensions, we reweighted our data using demographic characteristics.

From April 17 to 26 we conducted a large, 50 state survey, the results of which are presented in this report. The first section of the report looks at the nation as a whole while the second section focuses on individual states and comparisons across states.

There are 39 million books in the Library of Congress.1 This impressive analog measurement pales in comparison, however, with the realities of the digital world. Every day connected computers create the data equivalent of three million Libraries of Congress!2 This startling fact defines the economics of our time. Serving as the foundation for many beneficial outcomes, the aggregation of this torrent of data also menaces the public wellbeing with threats as diverse as election interference and non-competitive markets.

It is important to recognize we are only at the beginning of the data aggregation era. Market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that by 2025 the amount of data created and collected globally (both personal and machines talking to machines) will be over five times greater than today. This startling forecast leads to two conclusions: (1) if we are concerned about the collection and manipulation of data today – get ready for even more, and (2) developing rules for handling this data and its impact on privacy and marketplace competition is a sooner-rather-than-later priority.

The major digital platform companies present a large, complicated array of benefits and problems for the country and the world. The companies increasingly have the attention of both average citizens and senior-most public officials, as befits entities that have achieved great—perhaps even paramount—influence in political, social, and cultural domains. And, in recent times, the companies have become the objects of profound ambivalence, with serious proposals emanating from serious sources recommending material changes in their legal rights and obligations.

The services offered, and the business models sustaining those services, produce very important consequences—both good and bad—in both the long-term and the short-term. Political and jurisprudential realities suggest that in the United States comprehensive policy responses will be formulated and implemented only over an extended period. And that raises the question, what legal mechanisms are available to address issues that arise in the interim? Does availability of legal tools imply efficacy, or are the obstacles to the imposition of effective remedies—assuming remedies are required—so formidable as to compromise the undertaking?

The Black community online is awash in medical misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.

Even as Black people are disproportionately dying from the virus due to systemic racism, harmful inaccuracies about how to keep from contracting COVID-19, how to treat it, and where it comes from are metastasizing in Black online spaces, putting people at even greater risk.