From the Ohio State University press release:<\/p>\n
There’s a price to pay when you get your news and political information from the same place you find funny memes and cat pictures<\/strong>, new research suggests.<\/p>\n
\nThe study found that people viewing a blend of news and entertainment on a social media site tended to pay less attention to the source of content they consumed<\/strong> — meaning they could easily mistake satire or fiction for real news.<\/p>\n
People who viewed content that was clearly separated into categories — such as current affairs and entertainment — didn’t have the same issues evaluating the source and credibility of content they read.<\/p>\n
The findings show the dangers of people getting their news from social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, said study author George Pearson, a senior lecturer and research associate in communication at The Ohio State University.<\/p>\n
“We are drawn to these social media sites because they are one-stop shops for media content, updates from friends and family, and memes or cat pictures,” Pearson said.<\/p>\n
“But that jumbling of content makes everything seem the same to us<\/strong>. It makes it harder for us to distinguish what we need to take seriously from that which is only entertainment.”<\/p>\n
The study appears online in the journal\u00a0New Media & Society<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
For the study, Pearson created a fictional social media site called “Link Me.” The 370 participants saw four webpages with either two or four posts each. Each post consisted of a headline and short paragraph summarizing the story, as well as information on the source of the post.<\/p>\n
The sources were designed to be either high or low credibility, based on their name and description. (The sources’ credibility was tested in a previous study to make sure people understood.)<\/p>\n
For example, one high-credibility source was called “Washington Daily News” and was described as a “professional news organization renowned for high-quality and objective journalism.”<\/p>\n
One low-credibility source in the study was called “Hot Moon” and described as “a collective of nonprofessional writers.”<\/p>\n
All posts were based on real articles or public social media posts taken from Reddit or Tumblr.<\/p>\n
After viewing the site, participants were asked a variety of questions. Pearson was most interested in whether they paid more attention to the posts about current affairs topics than those in other categories, such as entertainment.<\/p>\n
“That would suggest that they were paying attention to the sources of the posts and understanding what was news and what was not,” Pearson said.<\/p>\n
The results showed that when the content was not grouped by distinct topics — in other words, news posts appeared on the same page with entertainment posts — participants reported paying less attention to the source of the content.<\/p>\n
“They were less likely to verify source information to ensure that it was a credible source,” he said.<\/p>\n
That may be one reason why satirical and other types of fake news get shared by people who evidently think it is real, Pearson said.<\/p>\n
For example, in 2018 the website React365 posted an article about a cruise ship disaster in Mexico that killed at least 32 people. The article generated more than 350,000 engagements on Facebook.<\/p>\n
The misinformation was quickly debunked by Snopes.com, which noted that react365’s homepage clearly showed it was a prank website where people could upload their own fictitious stories.<\/p>\n
Pearson said one of the problems is that many social media sites present content in the exact same way, no matter the source.<\/p>\n
“There is no visual distinction on Facebook between something from the New York Times and something from a random blog. They all have the same color scheme, same font,” he said.<\/p>\n
One solution would be for social media companies to develop tools to distinguish content.<\/p>\n
But until that happens, it is up to users to pay more attention to where their news is coming from — as difficult as that may be, Pearson said.<\/p>\n
“Right now, the structure of information platforms — especially social media — may be reducing positive media literacy behaviors<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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