Motivated Fake News Perception: The Impact of News Sources and Policy Support on Audiences’ Assessment of News Fakeness

Stephanie Jean Tsang

doi:10.1177/1077699020952129

Motivated Fake News Perception: The Impact of News Sources and Policy Support on Audiences’ Assessment of News Fakeness

Stephanie Jean Tsang^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Communication Studies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

91 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

An online experiment (N = 280) exposed participants in Hong Kong to an anti-police WhatsApp news message during the extradition bill controversy. Although source verification is commonly recommended as a strategy to avoid being deceived by fake news, the findings did not reveal that the news source (legacy news outlet vs. online forum vs. no source) impacted the perceived fakeness of the news message. Nonetheless, participants holding opposing stances were found to perceive the same news message to be fake to significantly varying degrees, providing evidence that motivated reasoning plays in the spread of fake news.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1059-1077
Number of pages	19
Journal	Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
Volume	98
Issue number	4
Early online date	31 Aug 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020952129
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2021

Scopus Subject Areas

Communication

User-Defined Keywords

disinformation
fake news
motivated reasoning
sources

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title = "Motivated Fake News Perception: The Impact of News Sources and Policy Support on Audiences{\textquoteright} Assessment of News Fakeness",

abstract = "An online experiment (N = 280) exposed participants in Hong Kong to an anti-police WhatsApp news message during the extradition bill controversy. Although source verification is commonly recommended as a strategy to avoid being deceived by fake news, the findings did not reveal that the news source (legacy news outlet vs. online forum vs. no source) impacted the perceived fakeness of the news message. Nonetheless, participants holding opposing stances were found to perceive the same news message to be fake to significantly varying degrees, providing evidence that motivated reasoning plays in the spread of fake news.",

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AB - An online experiment (N = 280) exposed participants in Hong Kong to an anti-police WhatsApp news message during the extradition bill controversy. Although source verification is commonly recommended as a strategy to avoid being deceived by fake news, the findings did not reveal that the news source (legacy news outlet vs. online forum vs. no source) impacted the perceived fakeness of the news message. Nonetheless, participants holding opposing stances were found to perceive the same news message to be fake to significantly varying degrees, providing evidence that motivated reasoning plays in the spread of fake news.

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Motivated Fake News Perception: The Impact of News Sources and Policy Support on Audiences’ Assessment of News Fakeness

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