The second presenter in this session at the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore is Yuheng Wang, whose focus is on war misinformation. This centres especially on perceptions of the Ukraine conflict amongst Chinese Internet users, which have caused substantial splits and controversies.
Misinformation surrounding the war has been widespread, partly because – unusually – there was limited censorship of official information, enabling users to accumulate knowledge and form opinions about the war more freely than is usually the case. Nonetheless, users might also believe misinformation about the war more readily if it aligns with their own political views, and an embrace of blind pro-China patriotism and the limited media diet that this is often associated with may further exacerbate this.
The study explored this with a sample of Chinese nationals in Europe, using Chinese-language materials. It tested conspiracy theories about Ukrainian bio weapons laboratories and Russian conscription processes. More right-wing, blindly patriotic users were more likely to be susceptible to misinformation; this also shows a certain level of confirmation bias. Higher levels of blind patriotism were also associated with lower factual knowledge and lower accurate knowledge acquisition.
