Forget technology — politicians pose the gravest misinformation threat: People pay more attention to what prominent politicians say, and supporters of those politicians are more inclined to believe it and act on it.
We know this from years of research. Millions of Americans believed there was systematic voter fraud in the 2020 elections, that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, that human activity played little role in climate change, and that the risks and side effects of Covid-19 vaccines outweighed the health benefits. What all these misleading beliefs have in common is that they have been systematically advanced by political actors — by the right in the US. But in, for example, Mexico, there is plenty of misinformation coming from the left.
The relationship between political affiliation and beliefs about sources of “fake news”: The 2016 US Presidential campaign saw an explosion in popularity for the term “fake news.” This phenomenon raises interesting questions: Which news sources do people believe are fake, and what do people think “fake news” means? One possibility is that beliefs about the news reflect a bias to disbelieve information that conflicts with existing beliefs and desires. If so, then news sources people consider “fake” might differ according to political affiliation. To test this idea, we asked people to tell us what “fake news” means, and to rate several news sources for the extent to which each provides real news, fake news, and propaganda. We found that political affiliation influenced people’s descriptions and their beliefs about which news sources are “fake.” These results have implications for people’s interpretations of news information and for the extent to which people can be misled by factually incorrect journalism.
Noam Chomsky: The five filters of the mass media: According to Chomsky, media operate through five filters: ownership, advertising, the media elite, flak and the common enemy.
La concentration des médias contre la démocratie: Les enquêtes d’opinion ont montré qu’une majorité des Français ne fait plus confiance au traitement médiatique de l’actualité, notamment parce que les journalistes sont perçus comme dépendants à la fois du pouvoir politique et du pouvoir économique, c’est-à-dire des annonceurs et des actionnaires. La même méfiance s’exprime envers les médias sociaux, contrôlés en grande partie par l’oligopole des GAFAM, perçus souvent comme source de désinformation et de manipulation. Il est donc urgent de réformer la loi afin de garantir le pluralisme médiatique et défendre la démocratie. De nombreuses propositions existent à ce sujet.
We Found the One Group of Americans Who Are Most Likely to Spread Fake News: In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation.
Why Do People Share Ideologically Extreme, False, and Misleading Content on Social Media? A Self-Report and Trace Data–Based Analysis of Countermedia Content Dissemination on Facebook and Twitter: Recently, substantial attention has been paid to the spread of highly partisan and often factually incorrect information (i.e., so-called “fake news”) on social media. In this study, we attempt to extend current knowledge on this topic by exploring the degree to which individual levels of ideological extremity, social trust, and trust in the news media are associated with the dissemination of countermedia content, or web-based, ideologically extreme information that uses false, biased, misleading, and hyper-partisan claims to counter the knowledge produced by the mainstream news media. To investigate these possible associations, we used a combination of self-report survey data and trace data collected from Facebook and Twitter. The results suggested that sharing countermedia content on Facebook is positively associated with ideological extremity and negatively associated with trust in the mainstream news media. On Twitter, we found evidence that countermedia content sharing is negatively associated with social trust.
How Fighting Monopoly Can Save Journalism: The collapse of the news industry is not an inevitable consequence of technology or market forces. It’s the result of policy mistakes over the past 40 years
Imagem: Media Bias Chart 11.0
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