The sharing of disinformation in cross-national comparison: analyzing patterns of resilience

Abstract

Although the problem of disinformation is on the rise across the globe, previous research has found that countries differ in the extent of widespread disinformation. In this study, we examine the willingness to disseminate disinformation across six countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S.). We use a model by Humprecht, Esser and van Aelst (2020) to study to what degree various systemic-structural factors influence individual behavior and contribute to resilience to disinformation. We draw on uniformly collected primary survey data and use regression analyses to examine which factors may explain citizens' decisions to not further propagate disinformation. The results of our cross-national study show that resilience factors are country-specific and are highly dependent on the respective political and information environments. While in some countries extreme ideology weakens resilience, in others low education can have such an effect. Crossnational resilience factors include heavy social media use, the use of alternative media, and populist party support. We discuss what kind of tailored measures in combating online disinformation are needed to improve social resilience across different countries.

Complicating the Resilience Model: A Four-Country Study About Misinformation

“…An analysis of US Twitter users found that approximately 1% of accounts are responsible for consuming about 80% of false news on that platform (Grinberg et al, 2019). Exposure to misinformation needs to be considered in conjunction with what people do when they encounter it, such as whether they believe false claims (Anspach & Carlson, 2020;Shin & Thorson, 2017;Valenzuela et al, 2019Valenzuela et al, , 2021 and share them with others (Humprecht et al, 2021;Valenzuela et al, 2019Valenzuela et al, , 2021.…”

“…To further probe the potential relationship between the individual-level correlates of these structural factors, their second study analyzed individuals' willingness not to like, share, and comment on fake news stories (Humprecht et al, 2021). In this study, the macro-level factors were changed to individual-level measures.…”

“…Distrust in the news media will increase motivation to use alternative sources, which are more likely to publish misinformation, thus increasing people's exposure to misinformation and decreasing resilience (Humprecht et al, 2021). In contrast, trust in mainstream media would increase their use of this media and thus increase resilience to disinformation.…”

“…The data were gathered as part of the 2018 Digital News Report (Newman et al, 2018). In subsequent work, Humprecht et al (2021) tested willingness to share, comment, and like false news stories as their dependent variable and used individual-level factors as predictors. The two studies offer discrepant findings regarding the cross-national applicability of the resilience model.…”

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The resilience model to disinformation (Humprecht et al, 2020(Humprecht et al, , 2021 suggests that countries will differ in exposure and reactions to disinformation due to their distinct media, economic, and political environments. In this model, higher media trust and the use of public service broadcasters are expected to build resilience to disinformation, while social media use and political polarization undermine resilience.

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