Conservatives And Liberals On Fake News

Blogs could be very useful and informative. Visit meltcomics, for instance. The invention of blogs has played a vital part in the political and media climate of today’s modern world. Blogs have given individuals the opportunity and greater capability to voice out an emphasize one’s sentiments, opinions, and ideas. But with this ability is the likelihood of becoming flooded with news that are scandalous as well as unreliable.

For instance, fake news (also termed as pseudo-news or junk news), is a form of propaganda or yellow journalism that contains intentional disinformation that is circulated through social media platforms and/or traditional news.

Conservatives and Liberals on Fake News

People are reasoners. When we hear, see or read an article on the news that verifies something we deem or believe is true (or probably want it to be real), we immediately and without hesitation share the news to others, especially on our social media accounts.

This not only pertains to scientific news items, but to “fake news” that are politically-based as well. The use of the term has blown up since the presidency in 2016, wherein its usage increased to over 350%. In fact, in 2017, Collins Dictionary labeled the word “fake news” as the word of the year.

A study suggests that both conservatives and liberals are driven to believe in pseudo-news, and set aside or reject real and factual news that challenges or go against their ideologies.

Craig Harper and Thom Baguley, in a preprint, showed the outcomes of three studies utilizing American and British participants to study whether or not liberals as well as conservatives are in the same way driven to believe in fake news. For the intention of the study, they wrote fake positive and negative news items, and for each item, a ‘TV breaking news’ picture was presented together with a brief written news scoop to add to the picture. The fake news presented included items that involved Obama and Trump.

The outcome revealed that individuals on both conservatives and liberals are evenly inclined to believe news that agree to their ideology, and to distrust or doubt news that contradicts them. For example, liberals identified the anti-Trump news item as much more genuine compared to the pro-Trump item, whereas conservatives showed a reverse judgment.

For further reading on this study, visit https://psyarxiv.com/ym6t5/.