‘Fake News’

The final session on this first day of the Future of Journalism 2023 conference begins with Jaume Suau, whose interest is in the role of news organisations in the spread of mis- and disinformation. What is the impact of disinformation, and how might we study it? Jaume is focussing here first on foreign-sponsored disinformation, whose main objective is to diminish societal trust and increase polarisation; Howe can we assess whether these campaigns have been successful? But in addition, there are also various top actors within society who create and spread disinformation content, and their dissemination strategies and goals might be …

It’s a Thursday in September in a surprisingly non-drizzly Cardiff, so I must be at the Future of Journalism 2023 conference – and it kicks off with a keynote by Valérie Bélair-Gagnon, whose focus is on the intersections between digital journalism and digital platforms. Journalism has always engaged in digital news innovation, and journalism research has accompanied this; the research has usually seen this innovation as a tangible process with its particular dynamics and stakeholders, and that could be measured and quantified, for instance by assessing its online success. Such success might mean improvements to work methods and workflows, to …

The next speaker in this fast-paced final ECREA PolCom 2023 conference session is Iuliana Calin, whose interest is in the susceptibility to disinformation. What is new about this today, given the long history of mis- and disinformation throughout history? Iuliana particularly notes the impact of AI and algorithms, of emotions, and of cognitive biases, and aims to build a psycho-social profile of the people most susceptible to disinformation, in order to develop communication strategies to address them.

Her study builds on a survey of 150 Romanian respondents, and tested participants’ susceptibility to disinformation, as well as several other personal traits …

The next speaker in this ECREA PolCom 2023 conference session is Karolína Bieliková, whose interest is in the resilience to disinformation on social networking sites amongst active users. How can such resilience be improved? Karolína’s research takes an individual-centric view, exploring users’ strategies for building their resilience.

Users who provide corrections to mis- and disinformation might be crucial here – what motivates them, how do they choose their strategies for engaging with mis- and disinformation, and how can they and their actions be supported and empowered? The present study explored this in the Czech Republic, through 60 interviews with active …

The next speakers in this final ECREA PolCom 2023 conference session are Elizaveta Kusnetsova and Martha Stolze, whose focus is on computational propaganda and the broader relationship between algorithmic systems and mis- and disinformation. This has been highlighted especially by the use of algorithmic tools by the Russian propaganda machine, particularly in the context of the Russian war against Ukraine. This continues a long-standing tradition of Soviet and Russian propaganda by using new technologies.

The present study focusses on the ‘US biolabs in Ukraine’ disinformation story, and is interested in what information sources search engines provide in response to this …

The final panel of this ECREA PolCom 2023 conference is on mis- and disinformation, and starts with Václav Štětka; his focus is especially on countries with populist governments (the US, Brazil, Poland, and Serbia). What has been the impact from such populism on the COVID-19 crisis?

The present study is informed by the Receive-Accept-Sample model of public opinion formation, where the media diet online and offline determines the extent to which people are exposed to (i.e. receive) mis- and disinformation. How is this affected by uses of social and legacy media? Second, preexisting values and beliefs will affect how ready …

The final speaker in this ECREA PolCom 2023 conference session is Alena Kluknavská, whose interest is in truth contestation on Facebook during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic; it approaches this through a country-comparative study involving several European nations (Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland). Truth contestation is especially prominent during crises, but we know very little about the dynamics between contestants in this process.

This can be approached through discourse network approaches, exploring how actors shape discourses of truthfulness and create binary divisions between the liars and the truthful. Such divisions often also map onto anti-elite antagonisms …

The final speaker in this THREATPIE panel at ECREA PolCom 2023 conference is Patrick van Erkel, who explores the role of media literacy in addressing misinformation. Media or news literacy has been promoted substantially in response to the infodemic of mis- and disinformation in recent years, and some such approaches can be affective. But what are the mechanisms for such effects: do they genuinely increase news literacy, or simply create more general distrust in the media? Does the framing of news literacy messages play a role here?

The present study thus begins by assuming that news literacy messages will generally …

The next speaker in this ECREA PolCom 2023 conference panel is Nicoleta Corbu, who explores the same dataset as the previous two speakers by examining third-person perceptions about misinformation detection. People generally tend to perceive greater media effects on third persons than on themselves; this might also have consequences for their own behaviours, such as less active fact-checking practices – but to date, there is no empirical data to prove this assumption.

The present study used the survey data also used by the past two speakers to establish participants’ third-person perceptions and explore their own engagement in active or passive …

The second speaker in this panel at ECREA PolCom 2023 conference is Christine Meltzer, whose focus is on the perception of social cohesion in society, and its relationship with media use. Such cohesion is critical as it plays a crucial role in societies’ responses to crises.

Media use can contribute to perceived social cohesion in society if people consume the same media, if such media content supports some level of social cohesion and shared experience, and supports trust and tolerance. Such media often tend to be high-quality rather than alternative and hyperpartisan media.

How is media use associated with social …