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Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection

Concern over the impact of fake news on major socio-political events is growing. The use of deliberate misinformation is thought to have played a role in the outcome of the UK EU referendum, the 2016 US presidential election, and in the effectiveness of COVID-19 public health messaging. As a result,...

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Autores principales: Shephard, Mark P., Robertson, David J., Huhe, Narisong, Anderson, Anthony
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10225687/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37255519
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1118407
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author Shephard, Mark P.
Robertson, David J.
Huhe, Narisong
Anderson, Anthony
author_facet Shephard, Mark P.
Robertson, David J.
Huhe, Narisong
Anderson, Anthony
author_sort Shephard, Mark P.
collection PubMed
description Concern over the impact of fake news on major socio-political events is growing. The use of deliberate misinformation is thought to have played a role in the outcome of the UK EU referendum, the 2016 US presidential election, and in the effectiveness of COVID-19 public health messaging. As a result, recent research has tended to focus on hyper-partisan (e.g., US politics; Democrat/Republican), person specific (e.g., Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump) content that incorporates emotive and hyperbolic language. However, in this study, we focus on an alternative form of fake news, across a variety of topics (e.g., Crime, Immigration, and Health), that avoids these characteristics, and which may therefore be more pervasive and difficult to detect. In a three-part study, we examined participants sharing intentions for fake news (including platform preference; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp), their ability to explicitly detect fake news, and whether individual differences on psychological measures of critical thinking ability, rational thinking, and emotional stability predict sharing behavior and detection ability. The results show that even our well-informed sample (political science students) were not immune to the effects of fake news, some issues (e.g., health and crime) were more likely to be shared than others (e.g., immigration), and on specific platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). In addition, we show that individual differences in emotional stability appears to be a key factor in sharing behavior, while rational thinking aptitude was key to fake news detection. Taken together, this study provides novel data that can be used to support targeted fake news interventions, suggesting possible news topic, sharing behavior, and platform specific insights. Such interventions, and implications for government policy, education, and social media companies are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-102256872023-05-30 Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection Shephard, Mark P. Robertson, David J. Huhe, Narisong Anderson, Anthony Front Psychol Psychology Concern over the impact of fake news on major socio-political events is growing. The use of deliberate misinformation is thought to have played a role in the outcome of the UK EU referendum, the 2016 US presidential election, and in the effectiveness of COVID-19 public health messaging. As a result, recent research has tended to focus on hyper-partisan (e.g., US politics; Democrat/Republican), person specific (e.g., Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump) content that incorporates emotive and hyperbolic language. However, in this study, we focus on an alternative form of fake news, across a variety of topics (e.g., Crime, Immigration, and Health), that avoids these characteristics, and which may therefore be more pervasive and difficult to detect. In a three-part study, we examined participants sharing intentions for fake news (including platform preference; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp), their ability to explicitly detect fake news, and whether individual differences on psychological measures of critical thinking ability, rational thinking, and emotional stability predict sharing behavior and detection ability. The results show that even our well-informed sample (political science students) were not immune to the effects of fake news, some issues (e.g., health and crime) were more likely to be shared than others (e.g., immigration), and on specific platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). In addition, we show that individual differences in emotional stability appears to be a key factor in sharing behavior, while rational thinking aptitude was key to fake news detection. Taken together, this study provides novel data that can be used to support targeted fake news interventions, suggesting possible news topic, sharing behavior, and platform specific insights. Such interventions, and implications for government policy, education, and social media companies are discussed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-05-15 /pmc/articles/PMC10225687/ /pubmed/37255519 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1118407 Text en Copyright © 2023 Shephard, Robertson, Huhe and Anderson. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Shephard, Mark P.
Robertson, David J.
Huhe, Narisong
Anderson, Anthony
Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection
title Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection
title_full Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection
title_fullStr Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection
title_full_unstemmed Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection
title_short Everyday non-partisan fake news: Sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection
title_sort everyday non-partisan fake news: sharing behavior, platform specificity, and detection
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10225687/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37255519
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1118407
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