Aging in an “infodemic”: The role of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency on news veracity detection.

Pehlivanoglu, Didem; Lighthall, Nichole R.; Lin, Tian; Kevin, J.; Polk, Rebecca; Perez, Eliany; Cahill, Brian; Ebner, Natalie C.

doi:10.1037/xap0000426

Cited by 16 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 83 publications

(146 reference statements)

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“…Studies that have assessed the relationship between age and news veracity discernment have generally found them to be significantly negatively correlated, which is precisely what was found in the present study (Brashier & Schacter, 2020; Guess et al, 2019; Pehlivanoglu et al, 2022). This finding may be due to an age-related decline in various cognitive abilities, such as executive control and attention (Verhaeghen & Cerella, 2002).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Effects of inductive learning and gamification on news veracity discernment.

Modirrousta-Galian¹,

Higham²,

Seabrooke³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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This preregistered study tests a novel psychological intervention to improve news veracity discernment. The main intervention involved inductive learning (IL) training (i.e., practice discriminating between multiple true and fake news exemplars with feedback) with or without gamification. Participants (N = 282 Prolific users) were randomly assigned to either a gamified IL intervention, a nongamified version of the same IL intervention, a no-treatment control group, or a Bad News intervention, a notable web-based game designed to tackle online misinformation. Following the intervention (if applicable), all participants rated the veracity of a novel set of news headlines. We hypothesized that the gamified intervention would be the most effective for improving news veracity discernment, followed by its nongamified equivalent, then Bad News, and finally the control group. The results were analyzed with receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses, which have previously never been applied to news veracity discernment. The analyses indicated that there were no significant differences between conditions and the Bayes factor indicated very strong evidence for the null. This finding raises questions about the effectiveness of current psychological interventions and contradicts prior research that has supported the efficacy of Bad News. Age, gender, and political leaning all predicted news veracity discernment.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Effects of inductive learning and gamification on news veracity discernment.

Modirrousta-Galian¹,

Higham²,

Seabrooke³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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“…Lab studies, for instance, suggest that older adults are no more likely than younger counterparts to perceive false news to be accurate (Pehlivanoglu et al 2022). Further, re-analysis (Brashier and Schacter 2020) of multiple survey studies in the US (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017; Pennycook and Rand 2018) show that the ability to distinguish legitimate and false headlines increases with age, a finding recently replicated cross-nationally (Peren Arin, Mazrekaj, and Thum 2023; Arechar et al 2023) (see also exploratory analyses in Calvillo et al 2020; Badrinathan 2020).…”

Section: To Public Opinion Quarterlymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Brashier and Schacter (2020) discuss potential culprits that include cognitive declines, social changes, and digital illiteracy. Poor digital literacy among older news consumers, in particular, has attracted attention of academics (Moore and Hancock 2020; Lee 2018; Moore and Hancock 2022), non-profits (e.g., MediaWise for Seniors from Poynter), and the press e.g., (Span 2020).Yet, the evidence supporting these skills-based explanations for age differences remains mixed.Lab studies, for instance, suggest that older adults are no more likely than younger counterparts to perceive false news to be accurate (Pehlivanoglu et al 2022). Further, re-analysis (Brashier and Schacter 2020) of multiple survey studies in the US (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017; Pennycook and Rand 2018) show that the ability to distinguish legitimate and false headlines increases with age, a finding recently replicated cross-nationally (Peren Arin, Mazrekaj, and Thum 2023; Arechar et al 2023) (see also exploratory analyses in Calvillo et al 2020; Badrinathan 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Partisanship and older Americans’ engagement with dubious political news

Lyons¹,

Montgomery²,

Reifler³

2023

Preprint

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Studies based on digital trace data show that older Americans visit and share dubious news sources far more often than younger cohorts, tendencies often attributed to lower levels of digital literacy. At the same time, survey experiments show that older Americans are no worse, if not better, at discerning between false and accurate news. If older Americans can identify misleading news content equally well, why are they still more likely to engage with it in observational settings? In this article, we combine survey measures and digital trace data for three nationally representative samples (N=9,944) to argue that the existing literature over-emphasizes the importance of factors like digital literacy relative to standard political variables such as political interest and partisanship, factors known to increase across the lifespan. Calcified partisanship in particular makes older Americans vulnerable to hyperpartisan news --- which is highly slanted but not verified as explicitly false. High rates of engagement with this category of content, which has been examined in survey studies of older citizens less regularly in the literature, may partially explain the high rates of engagement with dubious news domains in behavioral trace data. In all, our findings have important implications for how we understand --- and might intervene to reduce --- high engagement among this cohort with dubious news.

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“…Studying older adults can offer insight into both the experiences of a sizable portion of the global population and, potentially, the future of media perception after decades of offline and online media evaluation. Limited prior work on older adults related to misinformation has been quantitative (Barbera 2018;Grinberg et al 2019;Guess, Nagler, and Tucker 2019;Osmundsen et al 2021), finding across multiple platforms that older adults are more likely to engage with (read, share, or believe) misinformation than younger adults (Pehlivanoglu et al 2022). Yet there is much to learn from deeper qualitative investigation into the why behind this behavior, including understanding older adults' misinformation strategies and overall news media perceptions and behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misinformation Paradox

Munyaka

Hargittai

Redmiles

2022

jots

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Misinformation can be easily spread with the click of a button, but can cause irreversible harm and negatively impact news consumers’ ability to discern false information. Some prior work suggests that older adults may engage with (read, share, or believe) misinformation at higher rates than others. However, engagement explanations vary. In an effort to understand older adults' engagement with misinformation better, we investigate the misinformation experiences of older adults through their perception of prior media experiences. Analyzing 69 semi-structured interviews with adults ages 59+ from the US, the Netherlands, Bosnia, and Turkey, we find that people who have decades of potential exposure or experience with both online and traditional news media have reached a state of media cynicism in which they distrust most, or even all, of the news they receive. Yet, despite this media cynicism, the older adults we study rarely fact-check the media they see and continue to read and share news they distrust. These findings suggest that this paradoxical reaction to media cynicism, in addition to prior explanations such as cognitive issues and digital literacy, may in part explain older adults' engagement with misinformation. Thus, we introduce the misinformation paradox, an additional area of research worth exploring.

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Aging in an “infodemic”: The role of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency on news veracity detection.

Cited by 16 publications

References 83 publications

Effects of inductive learning and gamification on news veracity discernment.

Effects of inductive learning and gamification on news veracity discernment.

Partisanship and older Americans’ engagement with dubious political news

Misinformation Paradox

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