Michael and Breaux Cogn. Research (2021) 6:6 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00278-1 Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access The relationship between political afliation and beliefs about sources of “fake news” Robert B. Michael* and Brooke O. Breaux Abstract The 2016 US Presidential campaign saw an explosion in popularity for the term “fake news.” This phenomenon raises interesting questions: Which news sources do people believe are fake, and what do people think “fake news” means? One possibility is that beliefs about the news refect a bias to disbelieve information that conficts with existing beliefs and desires. If so, then news sources people consider “fake” might difer according to political afliation. To test this idea, we asked people to tell us what “fake news” means, and to rate several news sources for the extent to which each provides real news, fake news, and propaganda. We found that political afliation infuenced people’s descriptions and their beliefs about which news sources are “fake.” These results have implications for people’s interpretations of news information and for the extent to which people can be misled by factually incorrect journalism. Keywords: Desirability bias, Fake news, Journalism, Politics Signifcance statement Te phrase “fake news” took center stage during the Advances in technology have made it easier than ever 2016 US Presidential election. Figure 1 displays data from for nefarious groups to launch and co-ordinate disinfor- Google Trends—a public web service showing the rela- mation campaigns. Concerns about the manipulation of tive frequency of search terms—and highlights the rise popular social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and in popularity of the phrase (Google Trends 2018). As Reddit dovetail with the relatively recent explosive rise the fgure shows, searches for “fake news” were almost in popularity of the term “fake news.” People are faced unheard of in September 2016. But searches increased with an increasingly difcult problem of sorting fact from as the election drew near and skyrocketed after the elec- fction. How do people decide what news to believe? tion in mid-January 2017. Tis peak was the result of We suspected that the news sources people trust are then president-elect Donald J. Trump’s denouncement of the ones that confrm their pre-existing beliefs, and the CNN as fake news, during his frst press conference on news sources people distrust are the ones that confict the 11th of January (Savransky 2017). with their pre-existing beliefs. We asked people to rate a Fake news quickly became a worrying phenomenon. variety of news sources according to how “real” or “fake” Multiple groups sprouted eforts to educate the public they were and found difering patterns of beliefs across in sorting fact from fction, including: Te News Liter- the political spectrum. Our results suggest that political acy Project (http://www.thene wslit eracy proje ct.org), the afliation might drive skepticism—or the lack thereof— Washington Post (Berinsky 2017), and even social media of news information. giant Facebook (Price 2017). Social scientists have joined these eforts too. Recent evidence, for example, shows “You are fake news.” — Donald J. Trump, 45 th Presi- that deliberately generating misleading information in dent of the United States of America. the guise of a game improves the ability to detect and resist fake news (Roozenbeek and van der Linden 2019). *Correspondence: [email protected] Other recent work shows that people are better able to Department of Psychology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, PO remember corrections to false statements when given Box 43644, Lafayette, LA 70504‑3644, USA reminders of those statements (Wahlheim et al. 2020). © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. Michael and Breaux Cogn. Research (2021) 6:6 Page 2 of 15 100 "fake news" "propaganda" 75 y 50 e search popularit v la Re 25 0 Sep 16 Nov 16 Jan 17 Mar 17 May 17 Jul 17 Sep 17 Nov 17 Jan 18 Mar 18 Fig. 1 Google Trends data for the search terms “fake news” and “propaganda.” Searches for “fake news” prior to September 2016 were virtually non‑existent. The arrow highlights the frst spike in search popularity around the 2016 US Presidential election Ultimately, it is difcult to know how successful such fake news, but not necessarily propaganda (Tandoc et al. attempts will be, but there is reason to believe we need 2018). them. Misinformation researchers have repeatedly shown Te answers to these questions could inform theories that people fail to remember retractions of false or mis- of persuasion and reasoning that explain how people leading information, especially with the passage of time interpret information—including information reported (Lewandowsky et al. 2012; Rich and Zaragoza 2020). Or by the media. One such theory proposes that the more take the now-debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory, involved people are with a topic, the more likely they are which came to a dramatic conclusion when a man fred to attend to the content of that message over less central three rife shots in a pizzeria because he believed that information, like the credibility of the source (Greenwald the restaurant was involved in a child-sex ring linked to 1968; Petty and Cacioppo 1981). An alternative instead members of the Democratic party. Pizzagate was born proposes that the more involved people are with a topic, from fake news: Te roots of the conspiracy theory trace the narrower the range of ideas they will fnd acceptable back to a white-supremacist’s twitter post that went viral (Sherif et al. 1965). One prominent theory that speaks (Akpan 2016). closely to the issue of “fake news” suggests that people’s Another word for a similar phenomenon to “fake news” motivations—their preference for some outcome—afect is already part of our vocabulary: propaganda. Te rise the strategies used when reasoning (Epley and Gilovich of the phrase “fake news” as an alternative label for what 2016; Kunda 1990). More specifcally, this theory explains might at times be considered propaganda is politically how our goals can steer information processing away and psychologically intriguing, and leads to interest- from rationality and accuracy, leading to biased reason- ing questions: Which news sources do people consider ing. In addition, this theory helps explain how and under real news, or fake news, and why? Do the news sources what conditions people are likely to form partisan beliefs people categorize as fake news difer from those they (Bolsen et al. 2014; Pennycook and Rand 2019). Taken categorize as propaganda? One possibility is that people together, these theories are informative when considering interpret the phrase “fake news” to simply mean a new important issues, such as people’s trust or distrust of the way of saying “propaganda.” But an alternative possibil- media. ity is that people make distinctions between fake news Several factors predict how strongly people distrust the and propaganda. For example, satirical sources of infor- media, including: extremity of attitudes, political parti- mation like Te Onion might reasonably be classifed as sanship, political ideology, trust in the government, and Michael and Breaux Cogn. Research (2021) 6:6 Page 3 of 15 economic beliefs (Gunther 1988; Jones 2004; Lee 2010). Based on this body of work, we might anticipate that More specifcally, we know that people with particularly the news sources conservatives classify as fake news will strong positions on topics, people who identify as “strong be distinct from the news sources liberals classify as fake republicans” or “strong conservatives,” and people who news. Some recent evidence provides support for this report low trust in the government are the most likely idea, showing partisan diferences in what springs to to claim they almost never trust the media (Gunther mind when encountering the term “fake news” (van der 1988; Jones 2004). In addition, a pessimistic view of the Linden et al. 2020). We also know, however, that people economy predicts political distrust, which in turn pre- from opposing sides of the political spectrum can para- dicts distrust of the media (Lee 2010). Tis distrust infu- doxically both view the same news information as biased ences what news people ultimately believe and how they against their side (Perlof 2015). We might expect, then, behave. Research shows, for example, that while fake that people outside of the political center are most likely news is relatively uncommon, it is heavily concentrated to classify news sources in general as fake news. among conservatives, who—along with the elderly—are In this article, we report a series of experiments assess- the most likely to spread such news (Grinberg et al. 2019; ing people’s beliefs regarding “fake news.” More specif- Guess et al. 2019). And during a global pandemic, dis- cally, we ask three key questions. First, how does political trust in media accuracy among conservatives has led to afliation infuence the extent to which people believe misperceptions of risk and non-compliance with behav- various news sources report real news, fake news, and iors that mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (Rothgerber propaganda? Second, to what extent does political afli- et al.