Cognitive processing of political fake news. Review of experimental studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22235/d.v37i1.3112Keywords:
fake news, post-truth, disinformation, susceptibility, political psychologyAbstract
What are fake news? What are their impacts on contemporary political life? Why are people susceptible—or not—to this type of information? Keeping these questions as the central focus, a systematic review of experimental studies on susceptibility versus identification of political fake news is proposed, covering publications between 2017 and 2022 in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. Susceptibility factors are identified as low performance in analytical thinking, ideological congruence, and trusting environments (shared news), while high-performance analytical thinking, political knowledge, deliberation time, and more institutionalized journalistic sources and formats often function as discernment factors. The need to continue advancing in the creation and dissemination of effective strategies for citizens to distinguish the truthfulness of the political information they consume is addressed, given its importance for democratic life.
Downloads
References
Alonso Varela, L., & Saraiva Cruz, I. (2020). Búsqueda y evaluación de información: dos competencias necesarias en el contexto de las fake news. Palabra clave, 9(2), e90. https://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.24215/18539912e090
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspective, 31(2), 211-236. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211
Amazeen, M., & Bucy, E. (2019). Conferring resistance to digital disinformation: The inoculating influence of procedural news knowledge. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 63(3), 415-432. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2019.1653101
Anspach, N., & Carlson, T. (2020). What to believe? Social media commentary and belief in misinformation. Political Behavior, 42, 697-718. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9515-z
Basol, M., Roozenbeek, J., & Van der Linden, S. (2020). Good news about bad News: Gamified inoculation boosts confidence and cognitive Immunity against fake news. Journal of Cognition, 3(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.91
Bogart, S. (2019). The effects of counterfactual priming on belief in fake news (Tesis de maestría, Seton Hall University, New Jersey). https://scholarship.shu.edu/dissertations/2653
Bowyer, B., & Kahne, J. (2019). Motivated circulation: How misinformation and ideological alignment influence the circulation of political content. International Journal of Communication, 13(25), 5791-5815. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/11527/2880
Bronstein, M., Pennycook, G., Bear, A., Rand, D. G., & Cannon, T. (2019). Belief in fake news is associated with delusionality, dogmatism, religious fundamentalism, and reduced analytic thinking. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 8(1), 108-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2018.09.005
Buchanan, T., & Benson, V. (2019). Spreading disinformation on facebook: Do trust in message source, risk propensity, or personality affect the organic reach of “fake news”? Social Media + Society, 5(4), 87-96. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119888654
Calvillo, D., Garcia, R. J., Bertrand, K., & Mayers, T. A. (2021). Personality factors and self-reported political news consumption predict susceptibility to political fake news. Personality and individual differences, 174, 1106-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110666
Calvillo D., Ross, B., Garcia R., Smelter T., & Rutchick A. (2020). Political ideology predicts perceptions of the threat of COVID-19 (and susceptibility to fake news about It). Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(8), 1119-1128. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620940539
Clayton, K., Blair, S., Busam, J. A., Forstner, S., Glance, J., Green, G., Kawata, A., Kovvuri, A., Martin, J., Morgan, E., Sandhu, M., Sang, R., Scholz-Bright, R., Welch, A., Wolff, A., Zhou, A., & Nyhan, B. (2020). Real solutions for fake news? Measuring the effectiveness of general warnings and fact-check tags in reducing belief in false stories on social media. Political behavior, 42(4), 1073-1095. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09533-0
De Backer, F. (2019). Posverdad y fake news: propaganda y autoritarismo en el siglo XXI. (Tesis de Maestría, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, España). http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/eserv/bibliuned:masterFilosofiaFilosofiaPractica-Fbacker/De_Backer_Frederick_TFM.pdf
Dias, N., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Emphasizing publishers does not effectively reduce susceptibility to misinformation on social media. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, 1(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-001
Diehl, T., & Lee, S. (2022). Testing the cognitive involvement hypothesis on social media: 'News finds me' perceptions, partisanship, and fake news credibility. Computers in Human Behavior, 128, 107121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.107121
Edgerly, S., Mourão, R., Thorson, E., & Tham, S. (2019). When do audiences verify? How perceptions about message and source influence audience verification of news headlines. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 97(1), 52–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699019864680
Effron, D., & Raj, M. (2019). Misinformation and morality: encountering fake-news headlines makes them seem less unethical to publish and share. Psychological Science, 31(1), 75–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619887896
Erlich, A., Garner, C., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2022). Does Analytic Thinking Insulate Against Pro‐Kremlin Disinformation? Evidence From Ukraine. Political Psychology, 44, 79-94. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12819
Faragó, L., Kende, A., & Krekó, P. (2019). We only believe in news that we doctored ourselves. Social Psychology, 51(2), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000391
Fazio, L. (2020). Pausing to consider why a headline is true or false can help reduce the sharing of false news. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, 1(2), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-009
Gao, M., Xiao, Z., Karahalios, K., & Fu, W. (2018). To label or not to label: The effect of stance and credibility labels on readers’ selection and perception of news articles. Proceedings of the ACM on HumanComputer Interaction, (2), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274324
Gaozhao, D. (2021). Flagging fake news on social media: An experimental study of media consumers' identification of fake news. Government Information Quarterly, 38(3), 101591. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2021.101591
Gauss de Moraes, G. (2019). O uso de estratégias de raciocínio condicional na confiança e desconfiança em fake news. (Tesis de posgrado, Centro Universitário de Brasília, Brasil). https://doi.org/10.5102/pic.n1.2018.6357
Giménez, J., Espinoza, J., Vitale, F., Escalante, M., Franceschi, M., & Caneva, J. (2020). Coronavirus y desinformación: la otra pandemia. Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación Social Universidad de la Plata. http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/94170
Halpern, D., Valenzuela, S., Katz, J., & Miranda, J. (2019). From belief in conspiracy theories to trust in others: which factors influence exposure, believing and sharing fake news. En G. Meiselwitz, Social computing and social media. Design, human behavior and analytics (pp. 217 – 232). Springer. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3- 030-21902-4_16
Horne, B., Nevo, D., O’Donovan, J., Cho, J., & Adalı, S. (2019). Rating reliability and bias in news articles: Does aI assistance help everyone?. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 13(1), 247-256. https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/3226
Jones-Jang, S., Mortensen, T., & Liu, J. (2019). Does media literacy help identification of fake news? Information literacy helps, but other literacies don’t. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(2), 371-388. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219869406
Kim, A., Moravec, P., & Dennis, A. (2019). Combating fake news on social media with source ratings: The effects of user and expert reputation ratings. Journal of Management Information Systems, 36(3), 931-968. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2019.1628921
Kim, A., & Dennis A. (2018, 3-6 de enero). Says who?: How news presentation format influences perceived believability and the engagement level of social media users. Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/50385
Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480-498. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480
Lazer, D., Baum, M., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A., Greenhill, K., Menczer, F., Metzger, M., Nyhan, B., Pennycook, G., Rothschild, D., Schudson, M., Sloman, S., Sunstein, S., Thornson, E., Duncan, J., & Zittrain, J. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094-1096. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323650280_The_science_of_fake_news
Leeder, C. (2019). How college students evaluate and share “fake news” stories. Library & Information Science Research, 41(3), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2019.100967
Martel, C., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. (2020). Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 5(47), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00252-3
Mazzone, D. (2018). De los medios a las plataformas. Del control del gatekeeping a la conversación descontrolada. Contratexto, (29), 121-143. https://doi.org/10.26439/contratexto2018.n029.1824
McPhetres, J., Rand, D. G., & Pennycook, G. (2021). Character deprecation in fake news: Is it in supply or demand?. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(4), 624-637. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220965709
Miller, S. (2019). Examining engagement behavior on social media related to fake news. (Tesis de Doctorado, University of South Alabama, Estados Unidos). https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/examining-engagement-behavior-on-social-media/docview/2316852198/se-2?accountid=50234
Mont’Alverne, C., & Mitozo, I. (2019, 15-17 de mayo). Muito além da mamadeira erótica: as notícias compartilhadas nas redes de apoio a presidenciáveis em grupos de WhatsApp, nas eleições brasileiras de 2018. VIII Congresso da Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores em Comunicação e Política, Universidade de Brasília, Brasil. http://ctpol.unb.br/compolitica2019/GT4/gt4_Montalverne_Mitozo.pdf
Moravec, P., Kim, A., Dennis, A., & Minas, R. (2018). Do you really know If It’s true? How asking users to rate stories affects belief in fake news on social media. Kelley School of Business Research Paper N.º 18-89. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3271057
Murphy, G., Loftus, E., Grady, R., Levine L., & Greene, C. (2019). False memories for fake news during Ireland’s abortion referendum. Psychological Science, 30(10), 1449-1459. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619864887
Murphy, G., Loftus, E., Hofstein, R., Levine, L., & Greene, C. (2020). Fool me twice: how effective is debriefing in false memory studies?. Memory, 28(7), 938-949. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2020.1803917
OxfordLanguages. (s. f.). Word of the Year 2016. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2016/
Páramo, P. (2020). Cómo elaborar una revisión sistemática. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.31465.85608
Parra-Valero, P., & Oliveira, L. (2018). Fake news: una revisión sistemática de la literatura. (OBS*) Observatorio, Special Issue, 54-78. https://doi.org/10.15847/obsOBS12520181374
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. (2018). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, (188), 39-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. (2019a). Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking. Journal of Personality, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12476
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. (2019b). Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality. PNAS, 116(7), 2521-2526. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806781116
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. (2021). The psychology of fake news. Trends in cognitive sciences, 25(5), 388-402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007
Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1865-1880. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000465
Petty, R., & Cacioppo, J. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123-205. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ Richard-Petty-2/publication/229068356_The_Elaboration_Likelihood_Model_of_Persuasion/links/5 f5e3c184585154dbbcf0c21/The-Elaboration-Likelihood-Model-of-Persuasion.pdf
Roozenbeek, J., Van der Linden, S., & Nygren, T. (2020). Prebunking interventions based on “inoculation” theory can reduce susceptibility to misinformation across cultures. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, 1(2), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.37016//mr-2020-008
Roozenbeek, J., & Van der Linden, S. (2019). Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation. Palgrave Communications, 5(65), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0279-9
Rosińska, K., & Brzóska, P. (2020). Analysis of Individual Susceptibility of Social Media Users to Fake News: Polish Perspective. Media Studies, 21(3), 661–688. https://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-41e76145-8017-46ad-ab1a-2ab4f6b17f12/c/Rosinska__Brzoska_EN.pdf
Sánchez-Meca, J., & Botella, J. (2010). Revisiones Sistemáticas y Metaanálisis: herramientas para la práctica profesional. Papeles del Psicólogo, 31(1), 7-17. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/778/77812441002.pdf
Sanz Blasco, R., & Carro de Francisco, C. (2019). Susceptibilidad cognitiva a las falsas informaciones. Historia y Comunicación Social, 24(2), 521-531. https://doi.org/10.5209/hics.66296
Tamul, D., Ivory, A., Hotter, J., & Wolf, J. (2019). All the President’s tweets: effects of exposure to Trump’s “Fake News” accusations on perceptions of journalists, news stories, and issue evaluation. Mass Communication and Society, 23(3), 301-330. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2019.1652760
Tandoc, E., Lee, J., Chew, M., Xi Tan, F., & Hao Goh, Z. (2021). Falling for fake news: the role of political bias and cognitive ability. Asian Journal of Communication, 31(4) 237-253. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2021.1941149
Tandoc, E. (2019). The facts of fake news: A research review. Sociology Compass, 13(9), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12724
Vaccari, C., & Chadwick, A. (2020). Deepfakes and disinformation: Exploring the impact of synthetic political video on deception, uncertainty, and trust in news. Social Media+ Society, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120903408
Valenzuela, S., Halpern, D., Katz, J., & Miranda, J. (2019). The paradox of participation versus misinformation: Social media, political engagement, and the spread of misinformation. Digital Journalism, 7(6), 802-823. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1623701
Vegetti, F., & Mancosu, M. (2020). The impact of political sophistication and motivated reasoning on misinformation. Political Communication, 37(5), 678-695. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1744778
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559.
Waisbord, S. (2018). The elective affinity between post-truth communication and populist politics. Communication Research and Practice, 4(1), 17-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2018.1428928
Wardle, C., & Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking. Council of Europe. http://tverezo.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/PREMS-162317-GBR-2018-Report-desinformation-A4-BAT.pdf
Zhou, X., & Zafarani, R. (2018). Fake News: A survey of research, detection methods, and opportunities. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 53(5), 1-40. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1812.00315
Zimmermann, F., & Kohring, M. (2020). Mistrust, disinforming news, and vote choice: A panel survey on the origins and consequences of believing disinformation in the 2017 German parliamentary election. Political Communication, 37, 215-237. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1686095
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Dixit
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
From issue number 32 onwards all contents are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Issues number 29-31 are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The contents corresponding to number 28 and earlier editions are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
