Date of Award

Spring 4-25-2024

Document Type

Honors Project

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Political Science and International Affairs

Department Chair or Program Director

Dr. Rosalyn Cooperman

First Advisor

Dr. Jared McDonald

Second Advisor

Prof. Emile Lester

Major or Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

Does diminishing access to print news have an impact on people’s propensity to believe misinformation? What if this misinformation emanates from an online source as opposed to a print source? The focus of recent research on misinformation has been narrow: (1) recognizing its existence and acknowledging its potential impact, and (2) generating and categorizing potential analytical types of misinformation. However, the ramifications of vanishing print media have so far been overlooked. This paper asserts a connection between news sources and misinformation beliefs, further positing that the decline in the quality and availability of quality print journalism predicates an individual’s belief in political misinformation. Although inconclusive results were found linking geography with a tendency towards using social media as a main news source, analysis of social media habits and beliefs using the 2020-2022 ANES Social Media Survey suggests that misinformation belief generally concurs along party lines; that is, most users of these sites will follow general political leanings toward or against fake news stories. However, as partisan users increase their exposure to online material, they become more likely to believe in the misinformation spread from politically like-minded sources as opposed to those who obtain news from print. Thus, these data suggest that misinformation relies on the size of the audience exposed to it alongside the time invested in reading and propagating these stories. Although a preliminary analysis, it suggests several avenues for further examination and study and introduces a basis for new research on the topic to better explore correlations of the phenomenon.

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