When conspiracist beliefs matter: conditional associations between media-source reliance and pro-Russian disinformation beliefs during the war in Ukraine

Introduction Belief in pro-Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine has important societal consequences. However, less is known about how media-source reliance and distrust-related dispositions jointly relate to such beliefs. Methods Across two cross-sectional surveys conducted in Poland during the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine (Study 1: N = 397; Study 2: N = 1,066), we examined whether selecting social media, broadcast media, and online news portals as primary sources of war-related information was associated with pro-Russian disinformation beliefs, and whether these associations were moderated by political paranoia (Study 1) and conspiracy endorsement (Studies 1–2). Results Path analyses with multiple-testing correction showed that conspiracy-related belief indicators were consistently positively associated with disinformation beliefs across both studies, with political paranoia as a positive correlate in Study 1. Associations involving broad self-reported media-source indicators were weaker and less consistent, although direct comparisons across these predictor domains should be interpreted cautiously because they differed in measurement format, granularity, and conceptual proximity to the outcome. Reliance on social media was not positively associated with disinformation beliefs. Media-source main effects were generally weak; only online portal reliance in Study 2 remained robustly negatively associated with disinformation beliefs after correction for multiple testing. Moderation analyses suggested that source–disinformation associations were conditional on conspiracy endorsement, with different patterns emerging for classic CT endorsement vs. COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Discussion These findings caution against uniform channel-based accounts of disinformation susceptibility and suggest that distrust-related individual differences are relevant correlates of geopolitical disinformation endorsement within the present measurement design.