Abstract
The use of fabricated stories in print and broadcast news has for long been a profitable media communication strategy. Recently, the tendency to believe fake news has been rather related to the development of social media, for the agility and rapidity with which information is disseminated online, and for the impact social media has had on public opinion since the political happenings of 2016. Recent literature has credited offline characteristics, like partisanship, as more likely to be responsible for political polarisation than the sole fruition of online media sources, but empirical data is scarce. This paper fills this gap by looking at whether online news consumers are more at risk of being deceived by fake news when their fruition of information is biased. We then check whether they are more at risk than biased TV or paper news consumers. We also extend the research by looking at gender differences in the ability to debunk fake news, paying attention to the effect of question content on gendered response behaviour. Data comes from the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP) dataset relating to the 2018 Italian General elections. Multiple regression models and cross-tabulation were employed for the investigation. Results show that a) against predictions, taking information from online biased channels enhances debunking abilities, whereas a biased fruition of TV news increases the probability of believing fake news; and b) as prevented, when the focus of the fake news is on gender-relevant issues, women are as good as men at identifying what is fake.
Presenters
Silvia KeelingPostdoc, Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Milano, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—Democratic Disorder: Disinformation, the Media and Crisis in a Time of Change
KEYWORDS
Disinformation, Fake News, Traditional and Social media, Gender Gaps
