Party Over Reality: The Impact of Partisanship on Perceptions of Political Disinformation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The present study seeks to investigate three questions: (1) Does partisanship influence an individual’s belief of true and false political information? (2) Does partisanship influence an individual’s desire to share true and false political information?, and (3) Does the order in which information is processed influence the effect size of partisanship on belief of true and false political information? 149 Amazon MTurk participants completed a Qualtrics survey consisting of 8 “filler” (nonpolitical, clickbait-style) headlines and 8 political headlines (4 pro-Trump and 4 anti-Trump) of varying levels of accuracy (1: real headline, more plausible; 2: real headline, less plausible; 3: fake headline, more plausible; 4: fake headline, less plausible). For each headline, they were asked five question, including “How likely is it that the events described in this headline are true?” and “How likely is it that you would share this article with friends or family?” Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: foot-in-the-door (most real headlines first), door-in-the-face (most fake headlines first), and random. Across all participants, believability ratings of partisan-affirming headlines were significantly higher than the ratings of partisan-contradicting headlines (Levels 1-3, p < 0.001; Level 4, p < 0.05). Interestingly, Trump supporters’ ratings of belief in the most fake, friendly, Level 4 headlines were not significantly different from ratings of belief in either of the real, antagonistic Levels 1 and 2 headlines, suggesting that partisanship plays a more influential role than accuracy when assessing believability amongst Trump supporters (Level 4:1, p = 0.103; Level 4:2, p = 0.576). As far as likelihood of sharing, both Trump supporters and Trump opposers partisanship were more likely to share headlines that affirmed their beliefs than headlines that contradicted their beliefs, for all levels of headline believability. Lastly, there were no effects for order of headline presentation.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | 2019 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Joseff, Kathryn |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Hancock, Jeff |
| Advisor | Cohen, Geoffrey |
| Advisor | Schwalbe, Michael |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Dept. of Communication |
Subjects
| Subject | political disinformation |
|---|---|
| Subject | partisanship |
| Subject | polarization |
| Subject | Communication Masters Thesis |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
Joseff, Kathryn and Hancock, Jeff and Cohen, Geoffrey and Schwalbe, Michael. (2019). Party Over Reality: The Impact of Partisanship on Perceptions of Political Disinformation
. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/rt407dt0079
Collection
Masters Theses in Media Studies, Department of Communication, Stanford University
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- Contact
- kjoseff@stanford.edu
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