A new study by Frontiers in Psychology shows that despite media literacy, people can still choose to ignore fake news if it is favoring their favorite party, cause or person. The research was conducted among 2,400 US citizens to find out how people identify real news from fake ones in this era of technology. An author of the study, Daniel Sude, said that it is important to learn to identify which news is real and which is not, especially when technology is being. As this is an age of social media, people only read surface level news and do not try to understand what the news is actually conveying, and if its has authentic facts. But the actual problem isn’t that. The real problem is that even the people who want to understand news may feel biased and formulate their own version of the news. Which needs to be solved if we want people to consume real and authentic news.
In addition to it, our first goal should be to identify fake news. We should also try to understand why people try to believe a news from inauthentic websites even if the news is true and why they don’t believe a news even if it is from an authentic site. It is important to learn what parts of a news make people believe that the news that they are reading is completely true. The whole study is just about how to solve this problem. The research was conducted in two groups. The first group had 1008 participants while the second group had 1397 participants. The participants were given news that were similar to Facebook format. The news had headlines, images, URLs, brand logos, etc., that made the news look authentic.
The first group in the survey was given news related to politics. The content in the news was according to the political leanings of the participants. All the news articles were fake but they were presented in the way that made them look real. The second group of participants were also given similar types of news, but they were real. Both of the groups had news from mainstream as well as alternative news outlets.
What the research found out was that people trusted the news from a mainstream news outlet more as compared to an alternative one. This means that if people are not familar with the news source, they are less likely to believe the news from it. It is completely opposite from some other studies that suggest that people pay more attention to content than the source of news. Another thing that was found from this study is that people with political biases believed political news from alternative news outlets to be more real than mainstream ones.
The study was all about how important news media literacy is. The news that talks about something people already believe in feels good but it doesn’t mean it can be true. Same goes for news that talks about something that people are opposed of. This study has some limitations too as it was only among people of USA. There is a chance that behavior of people about real and fake news varies from place to place.
Image: DIW-AIgen
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In addition to it, our first goal should be to identify fake news. We should also try to understand why people try to believe a news from inauthentic websites even if the news is true and why they don’t believe a news even if it is from an authentic site. It is important to learn what parts of a news make people believe that the news that they are reading is completely true. The whole study is just about how to solve this problem. The research was conducted in two groups. The first group had 1008 participants while the second group had 1397 participants. The participants were given news that were similar to Facebook format. The news had headlines, images, URLs, brand logos, etc., that made the news look authentic.
The first group in the survey was given news related to politics. The content in the news was according to the political leanings of the participants. All the news articles were fake but they were presented in the way that made them look real. The second group of participants were also given similar types of news, but they were real. Both of the groups had news from mainstream as well as alternative news outlets.
What the research found out was that people trusted the news from a mainstream news outlet more as compared to an alternative one. This means that if people are not familar with the news source, they are less likely to believe the news from it. It is completely opposite from some other studies that suggest that people pay more attention to content than the source of news. Another thing that was found from this study is that people with political biases believed political news from alternative news outlets to be more real than mainstream ones.
The study was all about how important news media literacy is. The news that talks about something people already believe in feels good but it doesn’t mean it can be true. Same goes for news that talks about something that people are opposed of. This study has some limitations too as it was only among people of USA. There is a chance that behavior of people about real and fake news varies from place to place.
Read next: CAPTCHAs Need to Go, Here’s Why
