Susceptibility to Fake News And Misinformation: Who and Why?

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The low cost of producing news online and the rise of social media has created a media landscape in which individuals are significantly more likely to encounter misinformation and fake news than just a decade ago. Although scholarship has widely covered the supply and dissemination of misinformation and fake news, less is known about the demand side. How do people come into contact with fake news and who is more likely to believe it? The authors on this panel have contributed to filling this gap in the literature. Specifically, the papers in this panel are motivated by three questions: (1) What are the individual-level characteristics associated with believing fake news/misinformation? (2) How are individuals encountering this form of media? (3) What characteristics do effective fake news/misinformation articles share?
Aslett et al. present evidence from a 7-week panel survey in which they measure the ability of individuals to distinguish between true and false news, and test how different interventions (e.g. asking individuals to search for information, paying individuals for the correct answer, withholding source information) affect individuals’ susceptibility to current fake news stories in the United States. Employing a dual-process cognition perspective, Berinsky et al. find that more deliberative people are better than more intuitive people at detecting misinformation headlines taken from social media, regardless of the headline’s political alignment. Erlich and Garner also focus on the susceptibility of individuals to misinformation/fake news, but within the Ukrainian context. They present the results of a study that identifies the most effective forms of Russian misinformation in Ukraine and Ukrainian groups most vulnerable to Russian misinformation. Lazer and Wilson round out this panel by asking how people find fake news online. Using an original dataset of browsing data around the 2018 U.S. Congressional elections, they present evidence as to who is most likely to engage with fake news and how. Together, these studies bring diverse data and methods to bear on an important question in the literature: who is most susceptible to fake news/misinformation and why?

Sub Unit

• Division 40: Information Technology, & Politics

Individual Presentations

• Misinformation, Cognitive Reflection, and Political Information - Adam J. Berinsky; David Rand, MIT; Gordon Pennycook, University of Regina; Graelyn Humiston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ben Tappin

• Russian Disinformation in Ukraine - Aaron S. Erlich, McGill University; Calvin Garner, University of Washington

• Online Information Seeking during the 2018 U.S. Congressional Elections - David Lazer, Northeastern University; Christo Wilson, Northeastern University; Ronald Edward Robertson, Northeastern University

• The Truth About Fake News: Measuring Vulnerability to Fake News Online - Kevin Aslett, New York University; William P Godel, New York University; Nathaniel Persily, Stanford University; Zeve Sanderson, New York University; Joshua A. Tucker, New York University; Jonathan Nagler, New York University; Richard Bonneau, NYU

Chair

• Kevin Munger Pennsylvania State University

Discussants

• Andy Guess Princeton University

• Paul Resnick University of Michigan