| Popis: |
People tend to believe in inaccurate news headlines (fake news). It is argued, through studies, that conservative republicans are more likely to share inaccurate news content on social media, than others. The thesis tries to understand the degree of correlation between conservative republicans and right biased news content on the social media Facebook, and also on what level the participant manages to use his or her cognitive abilities to reflect and think rational about different news headlines, true and false. With a comprehensive fieldwork study and the cognitive reflection test (CRT), it is shown, that the participants have a high degree of correlation with right biased and extreme right biased news content on Facebook. This supplements the thesis with a gap, to examine the participants use of right biased views in his or her everyday life and network. The CRT has, other than confirmed the correlation between the participants and the right bias news content, also found that 4 out of 5 of the participants tend to believe the true news headlines more than the false news headlines. This despite of the different political biased content and neutral content in the CRT. There is, however, a missing coherence between the traditional CRT (Frederick, 2005) and the thesis’ CRT results. It is here found, within each participant, that the degree of self-efficacy, show and understand the correlation more thoroughly than Frederick’s (2005). The findings, throughout the fieldwork and CRT, therefore, argue that the participants manage to reflect and (to some extent) think rational on the news headlines, more than first anticipated. These findings open up a potential way to fight fake news. |
