Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb 12;6(1):6.
doi: 10.1186/s41235-021-00278-1.

The relationship between political affiliation and beliefs about sources of "fake news"

Robert B Michael  1 , Brooke O Breaux  2
Affiliations

The relationship between political affiliation and beliefs about sources of "fake news"

Robert B Michael et al. Cogn Res Princ Implic. .

Abstract

The 2016 US Presidential campaign saw an explosion in popularity for the term "fake news." This phenomenon raises interesting questions: Which news sources do people believe are fake, and what do people think "fake news" means? One possibility is that beliefs about the news reflect a bias to disbelieve information that conflicts with existing beliefs and desires. If so, then news sources people consider "fake" might differ according to political affiliation. To test this idea, we asked people to tell us what "fake news" means, and to rate several news sources for the extent to which each provides real news, fake news, and propaganda. We found that political affiliation influenced people's descriptions and their beliefs about which news sources are "fake." These results have implications for people's interpretations of news information and for the extent to which people can be misled by factually incorrect journalism.

Keywords: Desirability bias; Fake news; Journalism; Politics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Google Trends data for the search terms “fake news” and “propaganda.” Searches for “fake news” prior to September 2016 were virtually non-existent. The arrow highlights the first spike in search popularity around the 2016 US Presidential election
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Average Real news, Fake news, and Propaganda ratings—split by Political identification. Top panel: 2017 data. Middle panel: 2018 data. Bottom panel: 2020 data. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of cell means
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Akpan, N. (2016, December 5). The very real consequences of fake news stories and why your brain can’t ignore them. PBS. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/real-consequences-fake-news-stories-....
    1. Alexa Internet . Online computer software. San Francisco, CA: Amazon.com Inc; 2018.
    1. Altemeyer B. Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press; 1981.
    1. Alter AL, Oppenheimer DM. Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2009;13:219–235. doi: 10.1177/1088868309341564. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Berinsky, A. J. (2017, March 28). This is how you stop fake news. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/28/this-is-how....

LinkOut - more resources