People’s understanding of the concept of misinformation
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Authors
Osman, M
Adams, Z
Meder, B
Bechlivanidis, C
Verduga, O
Strong, C
Publication Date
2022-10Journal Title
Journal of Risk Research
ISSN
1366-9877
Publisher
Routledge
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Osman, M., Adams, Z., Meder, B., Bechlivanidis, C., Verduga, O., & Strong, C. (2022). People’s understanding of the concept of misinformation. Journal of Risk Research https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2022.2049623
Abstract
In the main, work has focused on defining and conceptualising the term misinformation, why and how people share misinformation, as well as the consequences for individual behaviour and policy making. Misinformation is an especially live issue in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and the communication that people use to inform their interpretations of risks, and claims about what is needed to reduce exposure and spread of the virus. However, we know very little about what the public take the concept of misinformation to mean. Therefore, here and for other matters of public interest, it is worth understanding what informs the way which people report what misinformation means to them. To address this, we present findings from a large scale representative survey (N = 4,407) from four countries (Russia, Turkey, UK, USA) to investigate the various ways in which people understand the concept of misinformation. Intentionality appears to matters, where most agreement was for the general description of misinformation as ‘Information that is intentionally designed to mislead’ (69%). Relative to other sources (e.g. media, other people), experts (48.3%) and scientific evidence (60.20%) were the most common sources by which to determine that something is misinformation. Finally, looking at specific features of information, misinformation was most associated with information that exaggerated conclusions from facts (49.24%), didn’t provide a complete picture (48.83%), and was presented as fact rather than opinion or rumour (43.07%). In general, country and demographic factors (age, gender, education, marital status, employment status) did not appear to distinguish these patterns of responses. This works helps to reveal what people report they take the concept of misinformation to mean, which may inform ways of targeting it.
Sponsorship
IPSOS MORI supported the survey work
Embargo Lift Date
2023-09-18
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2022.2049623
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/335629
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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