All of the chapters in this part explore the complexities of how individuals make sense of fake news and other kinds of false information. Too often public debates about fake news fail to consider why or how individuals engage with a variety of types of information, the psychological processes involved in how we assess information, or how technologies may influence the ways we think.
The first chapter in this part, “Mental Shortcuts, Emotion, and Social Rewards: The Challenges of Detecting and Resisting Fake News,” is by media effects scholars Nicholas David Bowman and Elizabeth Cohen. In this chapter, Bowman and Cohen argue that even though “spot fake news” tools are given to individuals to help them make sense of online information, there are a variety of reasons individuals may choose not to use them. Using mass communication and media psychology theories, Bowman and Cohen discuss fake news in relation to emotion, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and other factors influencing both the ways we engage with news content and whether we believe it. Finally, this chapter presents several explanations for why audiences might both mistrust and misunderstand news content, which make accepting and believing fake news all the easier.
The second chapter in this part, “Source Credibility and Belief in Fake News: I’ll Believe You If You Agree with Me,” is by Danielle Polage, who researches false belief from a psychological perspective. In her chapter, Polage discusses an experiment looking at the effects of false information exposure on individuals. She explores how our perceptions of source credibility, our existing knowledge frameworks, and the repetition of messages influence whether we believe false information. More specifically, results of Polage’s research support the idea that exposure to false information makes the information seem truer and more plausible and that increased familiarity can also lead people to misattribute where they heard about the false information. Polage concludes her chapter by discussing our collective responsibilities to stop the spread of fake news.
The final chapter in this part is by computer scientist Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, “Technology, Propaganda, and the Limits of the Human Intellect,” examines how technology relates to the ways people think, how we believe what we believe, and how we can be fooled. Metaxas argues that the blame we assign to social media and web technologies for the circulation of fake news as well as other types of online misinformation actually serve to manage our own intellectual limitations. Metaxas argues that we are “thinking lazy,” and while regulatory and technology changes will be necessary to address online misinformation, no solution will be complete without widespread epistemological education and the active engagement of citizens in democratic societies.
Alice Marwick, “Why Do People Share Fake News? A Sociotechnical Model of Media Effects,” Georgetown Law Technology Review 2, no. 2 (2018): 474–512, https://georgetownlawtechreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2.2-Marwick-pp-474-512.pdf.
Brendan Nyhan, “Why Fears of Fake News Are Overhyped,” Medium, February 4, 2019, https://medium.com/s/reasonable-doubt/why-fears-of-fake-news-are-overhyped-2ed9ca0a52c9.
Francesca Polletta and Jessica Callahan, “Deep Stories, Nostalgia Narratives, and Fake News: Storytelling in the Trump Era,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 5, no. 3 (2017): 392–408.