Drivers of Engagement with Mis- and Disinformation and Their Impact on Polarisation

The second day at I-POLHYS 2024 starts with a paper by the great Laura Ianelli and Giada Marino, who will recap I-POLHYS research activities on the connections between polarisation and problematic information. These concepts have been increasingly connected in the literature, and Laura and Giada conducted a systematic literature review of such research – yet only a small handful of the articles referencing both phenomena actually address them in any meaningful way; elsewhere the terms are more often used as buzzwords.

Both phenomena suffer from ambiguous definitions and a blending with other problematic concepts (‘echo chambers’, ‘filter bubbles’) – but the more sophisticated studies do find a connection between the two concepts and point to some systematic patterns. There is now also a research library of such publications on the I-POLHYS Website.

Giada and Laura then also explored the connection between polarisation and problematic information empirically against the context of COVID-19 mitigation measures in Italy. Media initially mainly supported these measures, and critical voices were presented mainly on social media. Did individuals’ perceptions of media reliability affect their polarisation on COVID-19 issues, then? They explored this through a three-wave longitudinal survey, and found that the likelihood of an extreme libertarian position increased over time for those who saw traditional media as a toxic environment and mainly accessed news from digital platforms. By contrast, a strong communitarian position was correlated with a perception of social media and the realm of ‘fake news’. This points to two divergent worldviews, related to divergent perceptions of information reliability on conventional and digital media.

They further explored this connection, using the same surveys, by examining the relationship between far-left and far-right positions and the unintentional sharing, correction, and verification of ‘fake news’ on social media and instant messaging services. Far-right followers were more likely to share misinformation, while far-left individuals were more likely to correct information on social media and verify news on instant messaging. In the Italian context (as in the US), problematic information favours only far-right extremism, therefore.

Further research is now exploring the effects of ‘news finds me’ perceptions and political knowledge on misinformation sharing on social media and instant messaging, as well as the role of ideological extremism in moderating these effects. Initial findings from this appear to indicate that left-wing extremism increases the dampening effect of higher political knowledge on misinformation sharing, while right-wing extremism neutralises any effect of political knowledge. But the factors driving such patterns still need to be much better understood.

Finally, there is also further work on the association of diverse ideas on participation and non-participation in politics with folk theories on ‘fake news’ and algorithmic content selection. Is disengagement from politics aligned with specific perceptions of mis- and disinformation and/or algorithmic shaping?