Sherlock-wannabes or when the audience fact-checks. How ideology, education, and alternative media use explain fact-checking behaviors

Abstract

When confronted with suspicious information, the most common advice is to rely on trusted, well-known news media outlets to verify it. However, in a high-choice, fragmented media ecosystem, news readers might easily find a source that confirms what they previously thought about an issue, or debunks reports that challenge their values and beliefs. As such, alternative news outlets might be a feasible venue for citizens to confront cross-cutting information. At the same time, avoiding contrary information or actively seeking different points of view depends on personal characteristics, such as ideology or education. Drawing upon the belief gap hypothesis, this study observes how alternative news media use, together with people’s education and political ideology, affect citizens’ fact-checking behaviors when encountering challenging information. Results from a two-wave panel study conducted in Chile suggest that ideology plays a role only for the highly educated, who tend to fact-check the most when they are closer to the left side of the political spectrum.