Much Ado About Nothing? Public Perceptions of Fake News

• In Event: Media and Information Effects on Public Opinion

Abstract

President Trump has popularized the term "Fake News". A January 2018 report by the Knight Foundation found that while a majority of US adults consider fake news to be a threat to democracy, many did not use the term consistently. For example, forty percent of Republicans stated that negative news coverage is the same as Fake News. In order for scholars to adequately measure the consequences of fake news in America, it is imperative to understand how Americans use this term.
We embedded an experiment in a nationally representative survey to examine how the public defines the term "Fake News", what constitutes "Fake News", and how it influences public perceptions about the legitimacy of news organizations and journalists, and issue salience. We find that when ideologues use the term "Fake News" it simply means that the news source has a different ideological perspective from their own. It does not influence perceptions of accuracy, legitimacy, credibility, or willingness of people to subscribe to the paper. Moreover, perceptions of a story being "fake" or real news does not influence issue salience. In sum, we conclude that concerns that the American public is less trusting of news outlets which they label "fake news" are overblown. Scholars and media elites use the term "Fake News" differently than do most Americans.

Authors

• Matthew R Miles, Brigham Young University, Idaho

• Hans J.G. Hassell, Florida State University