The Alternative Truth Kept Hidden From Us: The Effects of Multimodal Disinformation Disseminated by Ordinary Citizens and Alternative Hyper-Partisan Media

Abstract

The affordances of social media potentially amplify the effects of disinformation by offering the possibility to present deceptive content and sources in credible and native ways. We investigate the effects of two aspects related to the dissemination and modality of digital disinformation: (In)authentic references to the ordinary people as sources of disinformation and the multimodal embedding of deceptive content. Using a pre-registered experiment in the United States and India (N = 1008), we found that adding decontextualized visuals to disinformation on climate change did not amplify its effects on credibility or user engagement. Mimicking ordinary citizen cues has a stronger effect than using an alternative hyper-partisan media source to communicate disinformation under certain conditions. Low levels of media trust and preferences for information from the vox populi moderate the effects of citizen-initiated disinformation, suggesting that disenchanted citizens who oppose established information may be most vulnerable to disinformation attacks from social bots or trolls.