Department of Psychology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, PO Box 43644, Lafayette, LA, 70504-3644, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2021 Feb 12;6(1):6. doi: 10.1186/s41235-021-00278-1.
The 2016 US Presidential campaign saw an explosion in popularity for the term "fake news." This phenomenon raises interesting questions: Which news sources do people believe are fake, and what do people think "fake news" means? One possibility is that beliefs about the news reflect a bias to disbelieve information that conflicts with existing beliefs and desires. If so, then news sources people consider "fake" might differ according to political affiliation. To test this idea, we asked people to tell us what "fake news" means, and to rate several news sources for the extent to which each provides real news, fake news, and propaganda. We found that political affiliation influenced people's descriptions and their beliefs about which news sources are "fake." These results have implications for people's interpretations of news information and for the extent to which people can be misled by factually incorrect journalism.
2016 年美国总统竞选活动中，“假新闻”一词的流行度呈爆炸式增长。这一现象引发了有趣的问题：人们认为哪些新闻来源是假的，以及人们对“假新闻”的含义有何看法？一种可能性是，人们对新闻的看法反映了一种偏见，即不相信与现有信仰和愿望相冲突的信息。如果是这样，那么人们认为“假”的新闻来源可能会因政治派别而异。为了验证这一观点，我们要求人们告诉我们“假新闻”是什么意思，并对几个新闻来源进行评级，以评估每个新闻来源提供真实新闻、假新闻和宣传的程度。我们发现，政治派别影响了人们对新闻来源的描述和对哪些新闻来源是“假”的看法。这些结果对人们对新闻信息的解读以及人们对事实错误的新闻报道的误解程度都有影响。
