深夜亚洲福利久久

The Challenge

Misinformation and 鈥榝ake news鈥� are pressing concerns across society, for a whole range of issues, including politics. There have been many attempts to reduce how often internet users encounter fake political news and/or to reduce belief once exposed. Research has shown that this is very difficult. For example, Facebook added labels that read 鈥渄isputed by third party fact checkers鈥� to news stories, but removed them shortly after, as evidence showed they were not just ineffective, but sometimes increased belief in fake news items. Clearly there is an urgent need to understand the impact of fake news stories.

We need to better understand the ways in which different people are vulnerable to different types of fake news. We know voters can believe a fake news story is true, but this project went one step further to study the effects of fake news on voters鈥� memories for completely fabricated events, assessing who was most vulnerable and why.

Ireland, as a country with a strong democracy and well-regulated media, provides an interesting context in which to assess the impact of misinformation on voters鈥� memories. 

The Research

This research was partially funded by a Charlemont Grant Award from the Royal Irish Academy and Seed Funding from the School of Applied Psychology that supported collaboration with researchers in 深夜亚洲福利久久 of California, Irvine and 深夜亚洲福利久久 College Dublin. We partnered with TheJournal.ie and invited all Irish citizens over 18 to complete an online study in May 2018. This was important because we wanted to hear from people across Ireland, not just university staff and students.

We recruited over 3000 participants, equivalent to one in every 1000 registered voters in the Republic of Ireland. Participants were presented with short news stories of campaign events, accompanied by a photograph, and were asked to tell us how well they remembered the event, where they had heard it and how they had felt. Some of these events were true, but some were fabricated. For example, all participants saw either a story that implicated the 鈥榊es鈥� side OR the 鈥楴o鈥� side in having to destroy illegally-funded campaign posters.

We found that almost half (48%) of participants reported a false memory. In addition, people were especially likely to form a false memory for fake news that was in line with their beliefs (i.e. 鈥榊es鈥� voters were more likely to 鈥榬emember鈥� a 鈥楴o鈥� campaign scandal and vice-versa). We also found that warning people that they may have seen fake news did very little to reduce the rates of false memories and did not eliminate this effect of bias, with participants less likely to detect fake news that was in line with their beliefs.  

The Impact

This was one of the largest false memory studies conducted to date, globally, and is especially novel as it was conducted during a real-world referendum. It sheds light on how Irish citizens can be misled by fabricated news stories, potentially affecting their voting behavior.

This project had Knowledge Production Impact, resulting in a peer-reviewed paper in a top international journal. All materials and data associated with the project are available on the Open Science Framework, for other researchers to access. The project was also presented at international conferences (supported by a CACSSS Research Support Fund award).

This project has had Social and Cultural Impact as the findings were leveraged to stimulate public debate on the issue. National media coverage included articles on TheJournal.ie and interviews on RTE鈥檚 10 Things to Know programme and The Pat Kenny Show on 深夜亚洲福利久久talk radio. International media coverage included Forbes, Rolling Stone, BBC, Fox 深夜亚洲福利久久 and others¹. Local engagement was also prioritised, with a public talk at a joint European Researcher鈥檚 Night/Cork Skeptics event in Blackrock Castle Observatory.

This research also contributed to Capacity-Building Impact by increasing public-science dialogue. A member of the public posted the study Reddit for discussion. It quickly gained hundreds of thousands of views, ending up on 鈥榯he front page鈥� of Reddit, as over 50,000 members had 鈥榰pvoted鈥� the post. Over 2000 comments were posted and the research team answered questions about the study, directly engaging with the public. Additional Capacity 

Building Impact in the area of teaching and learning included student internships, where 10 students gained experience and UCC Works Awards while contributing to this project and other spin-off research, including a year-long study where we followed up with our participants to see how their memories may have changed in the months following the referendum. More outcomes and impact are expected from this research.

This project is the first in a series of studies that will help us to better understand voter memories across different contexts, in Ireland and around the world. It is anticipated that this project will eventually generate Policy Impact, as governments seek to understand how best to regulate political media and keep voters informed. 

For More Information

This project was led by Dr Gillian Murphy, School of Applied Psychology, UCC.

The published research paper is available from the . The Reddit discussion page can be viewed . Samples of media coverage can be found , and .

鈥�Thanks for designing this study. In the first survey I had false memories of stories that had not happened, because they 'seemed like something that could have happened'. This sense was definitely coloured by my strong pro-choice sympathies, so it helped me to realise how people fall into the trap of believing things that are not actually true, and I have become more aware of my own susceptibility as a result.

Anonymous Participant

^{1While exact readership figures are difficult to estimate Altmetric has placed the outputs related to this study in the top 5% of all 14.2 million outputs tracked by their system.}