Attitudes towards Disinformation in the UK, France, and Spain

The next paper in this IAMCR 2023 session is by Livia Gardía-Faroldi, who presents a comparative analysis of disinformation on social media across the UK, France, and Spain. Such a comparative study is necessary given the very different political and media environments across these countries. Do the audiences in these countries differ in their interest and trust in the news; their concern about fake news; and their use of social media for informational purposes? How are these attitudes associated with one another, and does this differ across these countries? The project explored these questions through a questionnaire.

Key findings are that UK audiences trust the news more, that Spanish audiences have the highest and French audiences the lowest interest in news; that Spanish audiences are least concerned about fake news; that UK users have encountered fake news most often, but that all have encountered fake news frequently; and that UK users use social media least for informational purposes. Unsurprisingly, those users who use social media the most for informational purposes also encounter the most fake news content.

Overall, then, audiences across the three countries differ, but not markedly so; concerns about fake news are also uneven, but again the differences are minor; but levels of use of social media for informational purposes are fairly diverse.