Identifying the Drivers Behind the Dissemination of Online Misinformation: A Study on Political Attitudes and Individual Characteristics in the Context of Engaging With Misinformation on Social Media

The increasing dissemination of online misinformation in recent years has raised the question which individuals interact with this kind of information and what role attitudinal congruence plays in this context. To answer these questions, we conduct surveys in six countries (BE, CH, DE, FR, UK, and US) and investigate the drivers of the dissemination of misinformation on three noncountry specific topics (immigration, climate change, and COVID-19). Our results show that besides issue attitudes and issue salience, political orientation, personality traits, and heavy social media use increase the willingness to disseminate misinformation online. We conclude that future research should not only consider individual’s beliefs but also focus on specific user groups that are particularly susceptible to misinformation and possibly caught in social media “fringe bubbles.

Perceptions of disinformation, media coverage and government policy related to the Coronavirus – survey findings from six Western countries

How do citizens evaluate the role of the press and governments during this unseen crisis and how concerned are they about false information? In this report we discuss perceptions of governments’ dealing, media coverage and concern about disinformation across six Western democracies. Further-more, we present current findings on the willingness of individuals to spread disinformation on social media concerning COVID-19. To investigate this, we conducted a large scale survey with active social media users in Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States over a period of three weeks (April 16 to May 6 2020, N = 7.0141). During these three weeks, almost all six countries were still under strict country-specific containment measures (“lockdowns”) to prevent the rapid spread of the coronavirus (European Commission 2020; Matrajt & Leung 2020). In this report we present some first findings

Is sensationalist disinformation more effective? Three facilitating factors at the national, individual, and situational level

Throughout the current global health crisis, false and misleading content has proliferated on social media. Previous research indicates that users of social media primarily share information that contains attention-grabbing elements. Because sensationalist elements are prevalent in disinformation, this study examines the role of sensationalism in supporting disinformation. We conducted survey experiments in six countries (N = 7,009), presenting versions of a false claim that differed in their degree of sensationalism. We varied three contextual conditions for disinformation support: whether respondents grew up in a tabloid-oriented national news culture, whether they indicated individual usage preferences for tabloid and alternative media, and how they rated their situational uncertainty during the pandemic. Our results show a weak influence of tabloidized cultures, but people who frequently use tabloid or alternative media are more likely to agree with disinformation. Users who are uncertain about what is true and what is false are also more likely to agree with disinformation, especially when it is presented sensationally. The average user, however, is more likely to agree with disinformation that is presented neutrally. This finding is concerning, as disinformation presented in a sober manner is much harder to detect by those who want to fight the “infodemic.

The sharing of disinformation in cross-national comparison: analyzing patterns of resilience

Although the problem of disinformation is on the rise across the globe, previous research has found that countries differ in the extent of widespread disinformation. In this study, we examine the willingness to disseminate disinformation across six countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S.). We use a model by Humprecht et al. (2020) to study to what degree various systemic-structural factors influence individual behavior and contribute to resilience to disinformation. We draw on uniformly collected primary survey data and use regression analyses to examine which factors may explain citizens’ decisions to not further propagate disinformation. The results of our cross-national study show that resilience factors are country-specific and are highly dependent on the respective political and information environments. While in some countries extreme ideology weakens resilience, in others low education can have such an effect. Cross-national resilience factors include heavy social media use, the use of alternative media, and populist party support. We discuss what kind of tailored measures in combating online disinformation are needed to improve social resilience across different countries