Seen a fake news story recently? Youre more likely to believe it next time

“Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President”; “ISIS Leader Calls for American Muslim Voters to Support Hillary Clinton.”


These examples of fake news are from the 2016 presidential election campaign. Such highly partisan fabricated stories designed to look like real reporting probably played a bigger role in that bitter election than in any previous American election cycle. The fabrications spread on social media and into traditional news sources in a way that tarnished both major candidates’ characters.

Sometimes the stories intentionally damage a candidate; sometimes the authors are driven only by dollar signs.

Questions about how and why voters across the political spectrum fell for such disinformation have nagged at social scientists since early in the 2016 race. The authors of a new study address these questions with cognitive experiments on familiarity and belief.

An academic study worth reading: “Prior Exposure Increases Perceived Accuracy of Fake News,” a Yale University working paper, 2017.

.... Goes on to explain the research in link.................


Analysis:

Instead of warning labels, the authors conclude that “larger solutions are needed that prevent people from ever seeing fake news
in the first place, rather than qualifiers aimed at making people discount the fake news that they see.”

They interpret their findings to suggest that “politicians who continuously repeat false statements will be successful, at least to some extent, in convincing people those statements are in fact true.”

And finally, they note that the polarized echo chambers many voters find themselves in today help create “incubation chambers for blatantly false (but highly salient and politicized) fake news stories.”


https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/social-media/fake-news-psychology-facebook-research