The relationship between political affiliation and beliefs about sources of "fake news".
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Michael RB
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7880518 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:This study explored social factors that are associated with the US deaths caused by COVID-19 after the declaration of economic reopening on May 1, 2020 by President Donald Trump. We seek to understand how county-level support for Trump interacted with social distancing policies to impact COVID-19 death rates. Overall, controlling for several potential confounders, counties with higher levels of Trump support do not necessarily experience greater mortality rates due to COVID-19. The predicted weekly death counts per county tended to increase over time with the implementation of several key health policies. However, the difference in COVID-19 outcomes between counties with low and high levels of Trump support grew after several weeks of the policy implementation as counties with higher levels of Trump support suffered relatively higher death rates. Counties with higher levels of Trump support exhibited lower percentages of mobile staying at home and higher percentages of people working part time or full time than otherwise comparable counties with lower levels of Trump support. The relative negative performance of Trump-supporting counties is robust after controlling for these measures of policy compliance. Counties with high percentages of older (aged 65 and above) persons tended to have greater death rates, as did more populous counties in general. This study indicates that policymakers should consider the risks inherent in controlling public health crises due to divisions in political ideology and confirms that vulnerable communities are at particularly high risk in public health crises.
| S-EPMC8242603 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionMisinformation surrounding COVID-19 poses a global public health problem that adversely affects governments' abilities to mitigate the disease and causes accidental deaths and self-harm due to false beliefs about the virus, prevention measures, vaccines and cures. We aim to examine the relationship between exposure to and trust in COVID-19 news (from Television, social media, interpersonal communication) and information sources (healthcare experts, government, clerics) and belief in COVID-19 myths and false information, as well as critical verification practices before posting on social media.MethodsWe use a cross-sectional researcher-administered phone survey of adults living in Lebanon between March 27 and April 23, 2020.ResultsThe sample included 56.1% men and 43.9% women, 37.9% with a university degree, 63.0% older than 30, and 7% with media literacy training. Those who trust COVID-19 news from social media [95%CI:(1.05-1.52)] and interpersonal communication [95%CI:(1.25-1.82)], and those who trust information from clerics [95%CI:(1.25-1.82)] were more likely to believe in COVID-19 myths and false information. University graduates [95%CI:(0.25-0.51)] and those who trust information from government [95%CI:(0.65-0.89] were less likely to believe in myths and false information. Those who believe in COVID-19 myths and false information [95%CI:(0.25-0.70)] were less likely to engage in critical social media posting practices. Only those who underwent media literacy training [95%CI:(1.24-6.55)] were more likely to engage in critical social media posting practices.ConclusionHigher education and trust in information from government contributed to decreasing belief in COVID-19 myths and false information. Trust in news from social media, interpersonal communication and clerics contributed to increasing belief in COVID-19 myths and false information, which in turn contributed to less critical social media posting practices, thereby exacerbated the infodemic. Media literacy training contributed to increasing critical social media posting practices, thereby played a role in mitigating the infodemic.
| S-EPMC8177444 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Ecological and cross-sectional studies have indicated that conservative political ideology is associated with better health. Longitudinal analyses of mortality are needed because subjective assessments of ideology may confound subjective assessments of health, particularly in cross-sectional analyses.Data were derived from the 2008 General Social Survey-National Death Index data set. Cox proportional analysis models were used to determine whether political party affiliation or political ideology was associated with time to death. Also, we attempted to identify whether self-reported happiness and self-rated health acted as mediators between political beliefs and time to death.In this analysis of 32,830 participants and a total follow-up time of 498,845 person-years, we find that political party affiliation and political ideology are associated with mortality. However, with the exception of independents (adjusted HR (AHR)=0.93, 95% CI 0.90 to 0.97), political party differences are explained by the participants' underlying sociodemographic characteristics. With respect to ideology, conservatives (AHR=1.06, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.12) and moderates (AHR=1.06, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.11) are at greater risk for mortality during follow-up than liberals.Political party affiliation and political ideology appear to be different predictors of mortality.
| S-EPMC5893220 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Public perceptions are well established as a key factor in support for climate change mitigation policies, and they tend to vary both within and between countries. Based on data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (N = 44,387), we examined the role of climate change beliefs and political orientation in explaining worry about climate change across 23 countries. We show that belief in anthropogenic climate change, followed by expectations of negative impacts from climate change, are the strongest predictors of worry about climate change. While the strength of the association between political orientation and worry about climate change varies across countries, self-positioning further to the right of the political spectrum is associated with lower levels of worry in most of the countries included in the analysis. We further show that political orientation moderates the relationship between climate change beliefs and worry. While increased confidence in the anthropogenic nature of climate change and expectations of negative impacts are both associated with increased worry across the political spectrum, the relationship is weaker among right-leaning as compared to left-leaning individuals. Notably, the main effect of political orientation on worry about climate change is no longer statistically significant when the interaction terms are present. Finally, a relatively small amount of the explained variance in worry is attributable to differences between countries. The findings might inform strategies for climate change communication in a European context.
| S-EPMC7378799 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Highlights • Social media, fake news, and COVID-19.• Misinformation on social media has fuelled panic regarding the COVID-19.• Altruism is the strongest predictor of fake news sharing on COVID-19.• Socialization, information seeking and pass time predict fake news sharing.• Entertainment is not associated with sharing fake news on COVID-19. Fake news dissemination on COVID-19 has increased in recent months, and the factors that lead to the sharing of this misinformation is less well studied. Therefore, this paper describes the result of a Nigerian sample (n = 385) regarding the proliferation of fake news on COVID-19. The fake news phenomenon was studied using the Uses and Gratification framework, which was extended by an “altruism” motivation. The data were analysed with Partial Least Squares (PLS) to determine the effects of six variables on the outcome of fake news sharing. Our results showed that altruism was the most significant factor that predicted fake news sharing of COVID-19. We also found that social media users’ motivations for information sharing, socialisation, information seeking and pass time predicted the sharing of false information about COVID-19. In contrast, no significant association was found for entertainment motivation. We concluded with some theoretical and practical implications.
| S-EPMC7390799 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundProliferation of misinformation in digital news environments can harm society in a number of ways, but its dangers are most acute when citizens believe that false news is factually accurate. A recent wave of empirical research focuses on factors that explain why people fall for the so-called fake news. In this scoping review, we summarize the results of experimental studies that test different predictors of individuals' belief in misinformation.MethodsThe review is based on a synthetic analysis of 26 scholarly articles. The authors developed and applied a search protocol to two academic databases, Scopus and Web of Science. The sample included experimental studies that test factors influencing users' ability to recognize fake news, their likelihood to trust it or intention to engage with such content. Relying on scoping review methodology, the authors then collated and summarized the available evidence.ResultsThe study identifies three broad groups of factors contributing to individuals' belief in fake news. Firstly, message characteristics-such as belief consistency and presentation cues-can drive people's belief in misinformation. Secondly, susceptibility to fake news can be determined by individual factors including people's cognitive styles, predispositions, and differences in news and information literacy. Finally, accuracy-promoting interventions such as warnings or nudges priming individuals to think about information veracity can impact judgements about fake news credibility. Evidence suggests that inoculation-type interventions can be both scalable and effective. We note that study results could be partly driven by design choices such as selection of stimuli and outcome measurement.ConclusionsWe call for expanding the scope and diversifying designs of empirical investigations of people's susceptibility to false information online. We recommend examining digital platforms beyond Facebook, using more diverse formats of stimulus material and adding a comparative angle to fake news research.
| S-EPMC8224890 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Countering misinformation can reduce belief in the moment, but corrective messages quickly fade from memory. We tested whether the longer-term impact of fact-checks depends on when people receive them. In two experiments (total N = 2,683), participants read true and false headlines taken from social media. In the treatment conditions, "true" and "false" tags appeared before, during, or after participants read each headline. Participants in a control condition received no information about veracity. One week later, participants in all conditions rated the same headlines' accuracy. Providing fact-checks after headlines (debunking) improved subsequent truth discernment more than providing the same information during (labeling) or before (prebunking) exposure. This finding informs the cognitive science of belief revision and has practical implications for social media platform designers.
| S-EPMC7865139 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Fake news is a complex problem that leads to different approaches used to identify them. In our paper, we focus on identifying fake news using its content. The used dataset containing fake and real news was pre-processed using syntactic analysis. Dependency grammar methods were used for the sentences of the dataset and based on them the importance of each word within the sentence was determined. This information about the importance of words in sentences was utilized to create the input vectors for classifications. The paper aims to find out whether it is possible to use the dependency grammar to improve the classification of fake news. We compared these methods with the TfIdf method. The results show that it is possible to use the dependency grammar information with acceptable accuracy for the classification of fake news. An important finding is that the dependency grammar can improve existing techniques. We have improved the traditional TfIdf technique in our experiment.
| S-EPMC8439466 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent research has explored the possibility of building attitudinal resistance against online misinformation through psychological inoculation. The inoculation metaphor relies on a medical analogy: by pre-emptively exposing people to weakened doses of misinformation cognitive immunity can be conferred. A recent example is the Bad News game, an online fake news game in which players learn about six common misinformation techniques. We present a replication and extension into the effectiveness of Bad News as an anti-misinformation intervention. We address three shortcomings identified in the original study: the lack of a control group, the relatively low number of test items, and the absence of attitudinal certainty measurements. Using a 2 (treatment vs. control) × 2 (pre vs. post) mixed design (N = 196) we measure participants' ability to spot misinformation techniques in 18 fake headlines before and after playing Bad News. We find that playing Bad News significantly improves people's ability to spot misinformation techniques compared to a gamified control group, and crucially, also increases people's level of confidence in their own judgments. Importantly, this confidence boost only occurred for those who updated their reliability assessments in the correct direction. This study offers further evidence for the effectiveness of psychological inoculation against not only specific instances of fake news, but the very strategies used in its production. Implications are discussed for inoculation theory and cognitive science research on fake news.
| S-EPMC6952868 | biostudies-literature
Project description:What is the role of emotion in susceptibility to believing fake news? Prior work on the psychology of misinformation has focused primarily on the extent to which reason and deliberation hinder versus help the formation of accurate beliefs. Several studies have suggested that people who engage in more reasoning are less likely to fall for fake news. However, the role of reliance on emotion in belief in fake news remains unclear. To shed light on this issue, we explored the relationship between experiencing specific emotions and believing fake news (Study 1; N?=?409). We found that across a wide range of specific emotions, heightened emotionality at the outset of the study was predictive of greater belief in fake (but not real) news posts. Then, in Study 2, we measured and manipulated reliance on emotion versus reason across four experiments (total N?=?3884). We found both correlational and causal evidence that reliance on emotion increases belief in fake news: self-reported use of emotion was positively associated with belief in fake (but not real) news, and inducing reliance on emotion resulted in greater belief in fake (but not real) news stories compared to a control or to inducing reliance on reason. These results shed light on the unique role that emotional processing may play in susceptibility to fake news.
| S-EPMC7539247 | biostudies-literature