The Influence of Political Ideology on Fake News Belief: The Portuguese Case

João Pedro Baptista,Valeriano Piñeiro-Naval,Anabela Gradim,Elisete Correia

doi:10.3390/publications9020023

João Pedro Baptista, Valeriano Piñeiro-Naval + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9020023

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Abstract

The relationship between a subject’s ideological persuasion with the belief and spread of fake news is the object of our study. Departing from a left- vs. right-wing framework, a questionnaire sought to position subjects on this political-ideological spectrum and demanded them to evaluate five pro-left and pro-right fake and real news, totaling 20 informational products. The results show the belief and dissemination of (fake) news are related to the political ideology of the participants, with right-wing subjects exhibiting a greater tendency to accept fake news, regardless of whether it is pro-left or pro-right fake news. These findings contradict the confirmation bias and may suggest that a greater influence of factors such as age, the level of digital news literacy and psychological aspects in the judgment of fake news are at play. Older and less educated respondents indicated they believed and would disseminate fake news at greater rates. Regardless of the ideology they favor, the Portuguese attributed higher credibility to the sample’s real news, a fact that can be meaningful regarding the fight against disinformation in Portugal and elsewhere.

Highlights

The increasing spread of fake news has become a global threat
The results revealed that political ideology has a significant effect on the multivariate composite (Wilk’s λ = 0.913, p < 0.001)
The belief and dissemination of news are related to the political ideology of the participants, classified within the scope of the left–right political-ideological dimension

Summary

Introduction

The increasing spread of fake news has become a global threat. After the 2016 US presidential election, fake news became a risk for Western democracies [1,2]. Online disinformation has become part of the daily life of the reader/user of social media. Through social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, fake news is widely disseminated [5,6,7,8], obtaining, in some cases, greater engagement (that is, shares, reactions and/or comments) than true popular news [4,9,10,11]. The literature shows that many studies have been carried out in the scope of detecting and mitigating fake news and identifying existing disinformation websites [12,13,14]

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