Abstract
This study develops and tests a theoretical framework, which draws on herd behavior literature and explains how and under what conditions tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation. More specifically, the study analyzes all cases of political and business misinformation in Switzerland and the U.K. between 2002 and 2018, which are selected based on corresponding Swiss and U.K. press councils’ rulings (N = 114). The findings show that during amplifying events (i.e., election campaigns and economic downturns) tabloids allocate more attention to political and business misinformation, which, in turn, drives broadsheets to allocate more attention to the misinformation as well–and especially if the misinformation serves broadsheets’ ideological goals. Moreover, the findings show differences between Swiss and U.K. media markets only in the case of business misinformation and suggest that the attention allocation process depends in particular on the strength of the amplifying event in a media market. Thereby, this study contributes to the understanding of how and under what conditions misinformation spreads in media markets.
Highlights
The spread of inaccurate information has become a serious concern around the world
All rulings were collected in which Swiss and U.K. press councils upheld accuracy violations in political and business journalism that were committed between January 2002 and December 2018 by news outlets located in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and England
This study developed and tested a theoretical framework, which draws on herd behavior literature and explains how and under what conditions tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives
Summary
The spread of inaccurate information has become a serious concern around the world. The functioning of democracies and economies relies on well-informed publics [1,2,3,4,5]. The spread of unverified content, creates the risk that political and economic outcomes “will rest on misinformation” ([6] page 736). “[s]ome misinformation is erroneous information or containing factual errors due to unintentional or innocent mistakes. Some misinformation is false information intentionally created to mislead and misinform people with an agenda” ([7] page 2). Inaccurate information, which is intentionally produced and spread to harm, is called disinformation [8] or fake news [9]. As Ha, Perez and Ray rightly argue, “the intention
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