Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T23:15:20.891Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Partisan Polarization Is the Primary Psychological Motivation behind Political Fake News Sharing on Twitter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2021

MATHIAS OSMUNDSEN Open the ORCID record for MATHIAS OSMUNDSEN [Opens in a new window] ,
ALEXANDER BOR Open the ORCID record for ALEXANDER BOR [Opens in a new window] ,
PETER BJERREGAARD VAHLSTRUP ,
ANJA BECHMANN Open the ORCID record for ANJA BECHMANN [Opens in a new window]  and
MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN Open the ORCID record for MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN [Opens in a new window]
MATHIAS OSMUNDSEN*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University
ALEXANDER BOR*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University
PETER BJERREGAARD VAHLSTRUP*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University
ANJA BECHMANN*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University
MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University
*
Mathias Osmundsen, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, m.osmundsen@ps.au.dk.
Alexander Bor, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, alexander.bor@ps.au.dk.
Peter Bjerregaard Vahlstrup, Teaching Associate Professor, School of Communication and Culture—Information Science, Aarhus University, imvpbv@cc.au.dk.
Anja Bechmann, Professor, School of Communication and Culture, DATALAB, Aarhus University, anjabechmann@cc.au.dk.
Michael Bang Petersen, Professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, michael@ps.au.dk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The rise of “fake news” is a major concern in contemporary Western democracies. Yet, research on the psychological motivations behind the spread of political fake news on social media is surprisingly limited. Are citizens who share fake news ignorant and lazy? Are they fueled by sinister motives, seeking to disrupt the social status quo? Or do they seek to attack partisan opponents in an increasingly polarized political environment? This article is the first to test these competing hypotheses based on a careful mapping of psychological profiles of over 2,300 American Twitter users linked to behavioral sharing data and sentiment analyses of more than 500,000 news story headlines. The findings contradict the ignorance perspective but provide some support for the disruption perspective and strong support for the partisan polarization perspective. Thus, individuals who report hating their political opponents are the most likely to share political fake news and selectively share content that is useful for derogating these opponents. Overall, our findings show that fake news sharing is fueled by the same psychological motivations that drive other forms of partisan behavior, including sharing partisan news from traditional and credible news sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 999 - 1015
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, Alan I., and Webster, Steven W.. 2018. “Negative Partisanship: Why Americans Dislike Parties but Behave Like Rabid Partisans.” Political Psychology 39: 119–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acerbi, Alberto. 2019. Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allcott, Hunt, Gentzkow, Matthew, and Yu, Chuan. 2020. “Trends in the Diffusion of Misinformation on Social Media.” Research & Politics 6 (2): 205316801984855.Google Scholar
Altay, Sacha, Hacquin, Anne-Sophie, and Mercier, Hugo. 2020. “Why do so Few People Share Fake News? It Hurts Their Reputation.” New Media & Society November. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1461444820969893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amira, Karyn, Wright, Jennifer Cole, and Goya-Tocchetto, Daniela. 2019. “In-group Love versus Out-group Hate: Which Is More Important to Partisans and When?” Political Behavior 60: 110–20.Google Scholar
Bakshy, Eytan, Messing, Solomon, and Adamic, Lada A.. 2015. “Exposure to Ideologically Diverse News and Opinion on Facebook.” Science 348 (6239): 1130–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barberá, Pablo, Jost, John T, Nagler, Jonathan, Tucker, Joshua A, and Bonneau, Richard. 2015. “Tweeting from Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber?” Psychological Science 26 (10): 1531–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brady, William J., Wills, Julian A., Jost, John T., Tucker, Joshua A., and Bavel, Jay J. Van. 2017. “Emotion Shapes The Diffusion of Moralized Content in Social Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (28): 7313–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brandt, Mark J., Reyna, Christine, Chambers, John R., Crawford, Jarret T., and Wetherell, Geoffrey. 2014. “The Ideological-conflict Hypothesis: Intolerance among Both Liberals and Conservatives.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 23 (1): 27–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckels, Erin E., Trapnell, Paul D., and Paulhus, Delroy L.. 2014. “Trolls Just Want to Have Fun.” Personality and Individual Differences 67: 97–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chadwick, Andrew, Vaccari, Cristian, and O’Loughlin, Ben. 2018. “Do Tabloids Poison the Well of Social Media? Explaining Democratically Dysfunctional News Sharing.” New Media & Society 20 (11): 4255–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowell, Colin. 2017. “Our Approach to Bots and Misinformation.” Twitter (blog). June 14, 2017. https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2017/Our-Approach-Bots-Misinformation.html.Google Scholar
Dekker, Henk, and Meijerink, Frits. 2012. “Political Cynicism: Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Explanation.” Politics, Culture and Society 3 (1): 33–48.Google Scholar
DiFonzo, Nicholas Prashant Bordia. 2007. Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eady, Gregory, Nagler, Jonathan, Guess, Andy, Zilinsky, Jan, and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2019. “How Many People Live in Political Bubbles on Social Media? Evidence from Linked Survey and Twitter Data.” Sage Open 9 (1): 2158244019832705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Effron, Daniel, and Raj, A. Medha. 2019. “Misinformation and Morality: Encountering Fake-news Headlines Makes Them Seem Less Unethical to Publish and Share.” Psychological Science 31 (1): 75–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feezell, Jessica T. 2016. “Predicting Online Political Participation: The Importance of Selection Bias and Selective Exposure in the Online Setting.” Political Research Quarterly 69 (3): 495–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zúñiga, Gil de, Homero, Logan Molyneux, and Zheng, Pei. 2014. “Social Media, Political Expression, and Political Participation: Panel Analysis of Lagged and Concurrent Relationships.” Journal of Communication 64 (4): 612–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grinberg, Nir, Joseph, Kenneth, Friedland, Lisa, Swire-Thompson, Briony, and Lazer, David. 2019. “Fake News on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” Science 363 (6425): 374–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Groeling, Tim. 2013. “Media Bias by the Numbers: Challenges and Opportunities in the Empirical Study of Partisan News.” Annual Review of Political Science 16: 129–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groseclose, Tim, and Milyo, Jeffrey. 2005. “A Measure of Media Bias.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 120 (4): 1191–1237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guess, Andrew, Lyons, Benjamin, Montgomery, Jacob M., Nyhan, Brendan, and Reifler, Jason. 2019. “Fake News, Facebook Ads, and Misperceptions.” Schoolinfosystem.org. February 15, 2019. https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2019/02/15/fake-news-facebook-ads-and-misperceptions%E2%80%A0-assessing-information-quality-in-the-2018-u-s-midterm-election-campaign/.Google Scholar
Guess, Andrew, Nagler, Jonathan, and Tucker, Joshua. 2019. “Less Than You Think: Prevalence and Predictors of Fake News Dissemination on Facebook.” Science Advances 5 (1): eaau4586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guess, Andrew M., Nyhan, Brendan, and Reifler, Jason. 2020. “Exposure to Untrustworthy Websites in the 2016 US Election.” Nature Human Behaviour 4 (5): 472–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hargittai, Eszter, and Hsieh, Yuli Patrick. 2011. “Succinct Survey Measures of Web-use Skills.” Social Science Computer Review 30 (1): 95–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. 2000. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, Sood, Gaurav, and Lelkes, Yphtach. 2012. “Affect, Not Ideology a Social Identity Perspective on Polarization.” Public Opinion Quarterly 76 (3): 405–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, and Persily, Nathaniel. 2019. “A New Model for Industry–Academic Partnerships.” PS: Political Science and Politics 53 (4): 703–09.Google Scholar
Kunda, Ziva. 1990. “The Case for Motivated Reasoning.” Psychological Bulletin 108 (3): 480–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lazer, David M. J., Baum, Matthew A., Benkler, Yochai, Berinsky, Adam J., Greenhill, Kelly M., Menczer, Filippo, Metzger, Miriam J., et al. 2018. “The Science of Fake News.” Science 359 (6380): 1094–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, Tae Kyoung, Kim, Youngju, and Coe, Kevin. 2018. “When Social Media Become Hostile Media: An Experimental Examination of News Sharing, Partisanship, and Follower Count.” Mass Communication and Society 21 (4): 450–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lelkes, Yphtach, and Westwood, Sean J.. 2017. “The Limits of Partisan Prejudice.” The Journal of Politics 79 (2): 485–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levendusky, Matthew S. 2013. “Why Do Partisan Media Polarize Viewers?” American Journal of Political Science 57 (3): 611–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Liliana. 2018. “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.” Public Integrity 21 (2): 214–19.Google Scholar
Miller, Joanne M., Saunders, Kyle L., and Farhart, Christina E.. 2015. “Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust.” American Journal of Political Science 60 (4): 824–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, Gordon, and Rand, David G.. 2019a. “Fighting Misinformation on Social Media Using Crowdsourced Judgments of News Source Quality.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (7): 2521–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, Gordon, and Rand, David G.. 2019b. “Lazy, Not Biased: Susceptibility to Partisan Fake News Is Better Explained by Lack of Reasoning Than by Motivated Reasoning.” Cognition 188: 39–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, Gordon, McPhetres, Jonathon, Zhang, Yunhao, Lu, Jackson G., and Rand, David G.. 2020. “Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-nudge Intervention.” Psychological Science 31 (7): 770–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pennycook, Gordon, Epstein, Ziv, Mosleh, Mohsen, Arechar, Antonio A., Eckles, Dean, and Rand, David G.. 2021. “Shifting Attention to Accuracy Can Reduce Misinformation Online.” Nature 592: 590–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Michael Bang, Osmundsen, Mathias, and Tooby, John. 2020. “The Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions of Falsehood.” Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Michael Bang, Osmundsen, Mathias, and Arceneaux, Kevin. 2018. “A “Need for Chaos” and the Sharing of Hostile Political Rumors in Advanced Democracies.” Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Jonathan. 2017. “Brexit, Trump, and Post-truth Politics.” Public Integrity 19 (6): 555–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverman, Craig. 2016. “This Analysis Shows How Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News on Facebook.” BuzzfeedNews (blog). https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook.Google Scholar
Stier, Sebastian, Breuer, Johannes, Siegers, Pascal, and Thorson, Kjerstin. 2019. “Integrating Survey Data and Digital Trace Data: Key Issues in Developing an Emerging Field.” Social Science Computer Review 38 (5): 503–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stroud, Natalie Jomini. 2010. “Polarization and Partisan Selective Exposure.” Journal of Communication 60 (3): 556–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taber, Charles S., and Lodge, Milton. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 755–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Keela S., and Oppenheimer, Daniel M.. 2016. “Investigating an Alternate Form of the Cognitive Reflection Test.” Judgment and Decision Making 11 (1): 99–113.Google Scholar
Tucker, Joshua A., Theocharis, Yannis, Roberts, Margaret E., and Barberá, Pablo. 2017. “From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 28 (4): 46–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vosoughi, Soroush, Roy, Deb, and Aral, Sinan. 2018. “The Spread of True and False News Online.” Science 359 (6380): 1146–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagner, Mara Celeste, and Boczkowski, Pablo J.. 2019. “The Reception of Fake News: The Interpretations and Practices That Shape the Consumption of Perceived Misinformation.” Digital Journalism 7 (7): 870–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wojcik, Stefan, and Hughes, Adam. 2019. “Sizing Up Twitter Users.” Pew Research Center. April 24, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Osmundsen et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AH6AZK
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Osmundsen et al. supplementary material

Osmundsen et al. supplementary material

Download Osmundsen et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 28.6 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.