  Differences in political ideology are increasingly appearing as an impediment
to successful bipartisan communication from local leadership. For example,
recent empirical findings have shown that conservatives are less likely to
adhere to COVID-19 health directives. This behavior is in direct contradiction
to past research which indicates that conservatives are more rule abiding,
prefer to avoid loss, and are more prevention-motivated than liberals. We
reconcile this disconnect between recent empirical findings and past research
by using insights gathered from press releases, millions of tweets, and
mobility data capturing local movement in retail, grocery, workplace, parks,
and transit domains during COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders. We find that
conservatives adhere to health directives when they express more fear of the
virus. In order to better understand this phenomenon, we analyze both official
and citizen communications and find that press releases from local and federal
government, along with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, lead to an
increase in expressions of fear on Twitter.
