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There have been a few papers now showing that "fake news" (fabricated/false news) is not as common as people thought. I've answered Q's about this in the past (wrt my research on the topic).
Here's my take: Fake news is just a salient e.g. of a larger category of content
1/7 https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1247143760351412225
Here's my take: Fake news is just a salient e.g. of a larger category of content
1/7 https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1247143760351412225
My research (with @DG_Rand and others) has taken a cognitive science perspective for this very reason. What we learn about the underlying mechanisms that lead people to believe and share fake news is likely to inform us about misinfo, falsehoods, politics, etc more broadly.
2/7
2/7
For example, we (with @robross) find very similar results in terms of the importance of analytic thinking for hyperpartisan misleading news (extremely common) as we do for political fake news (not common): https://psyarxiv.com/cgsx6/
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3/7
In a related example, work with @MohsenMosleh and @AaArechar found that analytic thinking is not just associated with sharing fake news, but with the overall quality of the news content one shares on twitter (plus lots of other stuff) https://psyarxiv.com/qaswn
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4/7
One of the key theoretical contributions of our fake news work (IMO) is that it shows how politics does not seem to drive *reasoning* per se. We find evidence for this (with @Ben_Tappin) in common motivating reasoning paradigms as well: https://psyarxiv.com/yuzfj/
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5/7
Last e.g.: Our previous work showed that prior exposure to a fake news headline increases later belief in that headline. In a collab with @Paul_Seli & his lab, we found that repetition increases belief for falsehoods from Trump *even among Democrats* https://psyarxiv.com/9evzc/
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These e.g. (IMO) highlight the utility of the cognitive approach. If you can form an (even broad) understanding of the underlying processes - in addition to the intricacies of the content - the research ought to be applicable to other domains.
That's the goal, anyway!
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That's the goal, anyway!
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