Character deprecation in fake news: Is it in supply or demand?
Name
1368430220965709.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.29 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
75a2eecfb8ae2d0312a3a934dc0f1817
Author(s)
McPhetres, Jonathon
Rand, David G
Pennycook, Gordon
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Group Processes and Intergroup Relations
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Citation
McPhetres, Jonathon, Rand, David G and Pennycook, Gordon. 2021. "Character deprecation in fake news: Is it in supply or demand?." Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 24 (4).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
A major focus of current research is understanding why people fall for and share fake news on social media. While much research focuses on understanding the role of personality-level traits for those who share the news, such as partisanship and analytic thinking, characteristics of the articles themselves have not been studied. Across two pre-registered studies, we examined whether character-deprecation headlines – headlines designed to deprecate someone’s character, but which have no impact on policy or legislation – increased the likelihood of self-reported sharing on social media. In Study 1 we harvested fake news items from online sources and compared sharing intentions between Republicans and Democrats. Results showed that, compared to Democrats, Republicans had greater intention to share character-deprecation headlines compared to news with policy implications. We then applied these findings experimentally. In Study 2 we developed a set of fake news items that was matched for content across pro-Democratic and pro-Republican headlines and across news focusing on a specific person (e.g., Trump) versus a generic person (e.g., a Republican). We found that, contrary to Study 1, Republicans were no more inclined toward character deprecation than Democrats. However, these findings suggest that while character assassination may be a feature of pro-Republican news, it is not more attractive to Republicans versus Democrats. News with policy implications, whether fake or real, seems consistently more attractive to members of both parties regardless of whether it attempts to deprecate an opponent’s character. Thus, character deprecation in fake news may in be in supply, but not in demand.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220965709
