Suchergebnisse

This study investigated the cognitive processing of true and false political information. Specifically, it examined the impact of source credibility on the assessment of veracity when information comes from a polarizing source (Experiment 1), and effectiveness of explanations when they come from one's own political party or an opposition party (Experiment 2). These experiments were conducted prior to the 2016 Presidential election. Participants rated their belief in factual and incorrect statements that President Trump made on the campaign trail; facts were subsequently affirmed and misinformation retracted. Participants then re-rated their belief immediately or after a delay. Experiment 1 found that (i) if information was attributed to Trump, Republican supporters of Trump believed it more than if it was presented without attribution, whereas the opposite was true for Democrats and (ii) although Trump supporters reduced their belief in misinformation items following a correction, they did not change their voting preferences. Experiment 2 revealed that the explanation's source had relatively little impact, and belief updating was more influenced by perceived credibility of the individual initially purporting the information. These findings suggest that people use political figures as a heuristic to guide evaluation of what is true or false, yet do not necessarily insist on veracity as a prerequisite for supporting political candidates.

In the 'post-truth era', political fact-checking has become an issue of considerable significance. A recent study in the context of the 2016 US election found that fact-checks of statements by Donald Trump changed participants' beliefs about those statements—regardless of whether participants supported Trump—but not their feelings towards Trump or voting intentions. However, the study balanced corrections of inaccurate statements with an equal number of affirmations of accurate statements. Therefore, the null effect of fact-checks on participants' voting intentions and feelings may have arisen because of this artificially created balance. Moreover, Trump's statements were not contrasted with statements from an opposing politician, and Trump's perceived veracity was not measured. The present study (N = 370) examined the issue further, manipulating the ratio of corrections to affirmations, and using Australian politicians (and Australian participants) from both sides of the political spectrum. We hypothesized that fact-checks would correct beliefs and that fact-checks would affect voters' support (i.e. voting intentions, feelings and perceptions of veracity), but only when corrections outnumbered affirmations. Both hypotheses were supported, suggesting that a politician's veracity does sometimes matter to voters. The effects of fact-checking were similar on both sides of the political spectrum, suggesting little motivated reasoning in the processing of fact-checks.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Misinformation among Mass Audiences as a Focus for Inquiry -- PART I Dimensions of Audience Awareness of Misinformation -- ONE Believing Things That Are Not True: A Cognitive Science Perspective on Misinformation -- TWO Awareness of Misinformation in Health-Related Advertising: A Narrative Review of the Literature -- THREE The Importance of Measuring Knowledge in the Age of Misinformation and Challenges in the Tobacco Domain -- FOUR Measuring Perceptions of Shares of Groups -- FIVE Dimensions of Visual Misinformation in the Emerging Media Landscape -- PART II Theoretical Effects and Consequences of Misinformation -- SIX The Effects of False Information in News Stories -- SEVEN Can Satire and Irony Constitute Misinformation? -- EIGHT Media and Political Misperceptions -- NINE Misinformation and Science: Emergence, Diffusion, and Persistence -- TEN Doing the Wrong Things for the Right Reasons: How Environmental Misinformation Affects Environmental Behavior -- PART III Solutions and Remedies for Misinformation -- ELEVEN Misinformation and Its Correction: Cognitive Mechanisms and Recommendations for Mass Communication -- TWELVE How to Counteract Consumer Product Misinformation -- THIRTEEN A History of Fact Checking in U.S. Politics and Election Contexts -- FOURTEEN Comparing Approaches to Journalistic Fact Checking -- FIFTEEN The Role of Middle-Level Gatekeepers in the Propagation and Longevity of Misinformation -- SIXTEEN Encouraging Information Search to Counteract Misinformation: Providing "Balanced" Information about Vaccines -- Conclusion: An Agenda for Misinformation Research -- Contributors -- Index