Third-Party Perception and Its Impact on Support for ‘Fake News’ Regulation

Day two at IAMCR 2019 starts for me with another ‘fake news’ panel, and the first presenter is Seong Choul Hong. His focus is on the continuing controversy over global warming, which remains a target for mis- and disinformation. Even Donald Trump has described climate change as a ‘hoax’ in the past. The present project is interested in the third-person effect of such controversies. This effect appears to be stronger in countries with less content regulation, incidentally.

Generally, audiences tend to be very confident about their own ability to detect ‘fake news’, and believe such content to mainly affect others rather than themselves. Audiences in countries with greater cultural focus on personal independence tend to do worse in such detection, however. Another cultural factor that should be recognised here is the tendency for uncertainty avoidance, which is greater in countries like Korea than the United States, for instance.

Building on survey data, this study examined this across a number of countries. Users in Spain and the U.S. believed others to be far more affected by ‘fake news’ about climate change than themselves; users in India and Korea thought the effect was roughly equal. Such differential perceptions also affect whether users were supportive of additional regulation to militate against ‘fake news’. Strong interest in uncertainty avoidance also results in strong support for more regulation.