Abstract
Abstract In recent years, online misinformation designed to resemble news by adopting news design conventions has proven to be a powerful vehicle for deception and persuasion. In a 2 (prior warning: present/absent) x 2 (article type: false/true) eye-tracking experiment, news consumers (N=49) viewed four science news articles from unfamiliar sources, then rated each article for credibility before being asked to classify each as true news or as false information presented as news. Results show that reminding participants about the existence of fake news significantly improved correct classification of false news articles, but did not lead to a significant increase in misclassification of true news articles as false. Analysis of eye-tracking data showed that duration of visual attention to news identifier elements, such as the headline, byline, timestamp on a page, predicted correct article classification. Implications for consumer education and information design are discussed.
Highlights
In recent years, online misinformation designed to resemble news by adopting news design conventions has proven to be a powerful vehicle for deception and persuasion
In a 2 x 2 eye-tracking experiment, news consumers (N=49) viewed four science news articles from unfamiliar sources, rated each article for credibility before being asked to classify each as true news or as false information presented as news
The findings of this study shed some light on the processes through which news consumers view and evaluate news, real and false, from unfamiliar sources, they raise several questions that should be addressed by ongoing research in this critical area of scholarship
Summary
Online misinformation designed to resemble news by adopting news design conventions has proven to be a powerful vehicle for deception and persuasion. But crucial to the understanding of misinformation psychology, have been the process through which consumers view, process and evaluate the veracity of online articles from unfamiliar sources that use news design elements to make misinformation seem factual or credible These false news articles rely on social media for their spread (Nelson & Taneja, 2018), to an even greater degree than other online news stories do The present research utilized a 49-participant mixedfactorial eye-tracking experiment in the aim of contributing to the nascent literature on false news and information processing in three key areas It sought to provide one of the first examinations of how online news readers visually attend to areas of the article page on fake news stories in comparison to real news stories. The study sought to gauge the relationship between users’ visual attention to several design elements on the article pages, such as source information, story recency and authorship information, internal story links, and external page links, on consumers’ credibility evaluations and ability to detect “fake” news stories
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