Not who you think? Exposure and vulnerability to misinformation

Autor: Nicolas M Anspach, Taylor N Carlson
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: New Media & Society. :146144482211304
ISSN: 1461-7315
1461-4448
DOI: 10.1177/14614448221130422
Popis: Is exposure to false information necessary for misbelief? In this article, we consider the possibility that certain individuals hold misinformed beliefs without encountering misinformation, thus questioning for whom exposure to “fake news” is most deleterious. Using a pre-registered experiment on a diverse sample of 1079 US respondents, we find that the young, those with low information literacy, and those with high trust in government tend to hold mistaken beliefs, even without exposure to misinformation. Because these groups are already misinformed, eventual exposure to fake news does little to influence their misperceptions. Instead, misinformation exposure affects the elderly, those with high information literacy, and those with low trust in mainstream media the most. These results suggest that research focused on correcting misperceptions should avoid studying how certain characteristics correlate with misbelief only in misinformation’s presence.
Databáze: OpenAIRE