“Who is gullible to political disinformation?” : predicting susceptibility of university students to fake news

Values and Ethics in Information Systems

“…Despite the pervasiveness of online misinformation and, in particular, fake news, we currently lack an understanding of the enabling characteristics of technology and its unique role in these processes. Some research points out that not only users generate fake news but also technology can be used to do so (Calvillo et al 2021;Bringula et al 2021). For instance, artificial intelligence can be used to create comments on news articles or even generate the articles themselves (Zellers et al 2019).…”

“…When summarizing the findings of scholarly articles on the topic, Bryanov and Vziatysheva (2021) identify three broad categories of determinants; namely, message characteristics, individual factors, and accuracy-promoting interventions. Several researchers have examined the importance of belief consistency and confirmation bias (Kim and Dennis 2019;Sindermann et al 2020;Calvillo et al 2021;Bringula et al 2021), referring to the tendency of people to be more susceptible to fake news that aligns with pre-existing values, beliefs, or political views. Second, individual factors, including cognitive modes, predispositions, and news and information literacy differences may determine individual susceptibility to fake news.…”

“…Second, individual factors, including cognitive modes, predispositions, and news and information literacy differences may determine individual susceptibility to fake news. For example, lower trust in science, media and government (Roozenbeek et al 2020), specific personality traits (e.g., lower levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, open-mindedness, and higher levels of extraversion), as well as certain media consumption characteristics (e.g., amount of Instagram visits and more hours of news consumption) have been linked to increased susceptibility to misinformation (Calvillo et al 2021;Bringula et al 2021). Additionally, emotional factors, such as higher levels of emotionality, have been linked to susceptibility to fake news (Martel et al 2020).…”

Effect of Source Type and Protective Message on the Critical Evaluation of News Messages on Facebook: Randomized Controlled Trial in the Netherlands

“…In particular, youths find it more difficult to overcome the spread of disinformation, as they are digital natives and most fake news is shared on online platforms [ 28 ]. Another study showed university students visiting social media platforms more often, and sharing and liking posts increases the susceptibility of students to fake news [ 29 ]. Furthermore, Buchanan showed that sharing false information online was not influenced by authoritativeness of the source of the material, and participants’ level of digital literacy had little effect on their responses [ 30 ].…”

Addressing infodemic through the comprehensive competency framework of media and information literacy

“…4 Logically, it is likely that this age group is also vulnerable to fake news, as a study from the Philippines reported that more than half of the student-respondents were deceived by fake news. 5 The collegiate age bracket has the tendency to share COVID-19-related information on social media, which is not fact-checked and may exacerbate health-related issues.…”