Persuasion and Influence

Fact Or Fake - Can You Believe The News?

The Problem

‘Fake News’ is undeniably a buzzword in the current social and political climate. Although some may throw around the term without any real meaning as a scapegoat for their own negative press, fake news is meaningful. The phenomenon is also not a new one, with its own place in the rich history of communication. It just so happens that those in power abusing the term often have fake news to thank for such positions in the first place. For example, in the run up to the 2016 U.S. election, the fake election story stating Pope Francis to have endorsed Trump for president was engaged with over 9 hundred thousand times on Facebook alone (Statista, 2019). Of more concern, the same research shows that at least 61% of U.S. users expressed some trust in the news stories populating their Facebook feeds. 

 With such wide and unlimited access to information underlying our communications in today’s society, being able to identify false and unsubstantiated claims would seem to be a worthwhile pursuit. However, what research suggests is that many people are not actually good at doing this, reflected in the relative online engagement between fake stories and real ones (Silverman, Strapagiel, Shaban & Hall 2016). Failing to dismiss such claims, allows potentially fraudulent information to influence our beliefs. There are certain conditions where this is more and less likely to happen, implicating certain psychological mechanisms that complement the process of acceptance. Regardless, when combining the reality that there are 3.03 billion active social media users with the fact that misinformation can be spread just as easily as information, finding ways to distinguish fact from fiction becomes imperative.

So, why is the problem important?

The issue of fake news is important because in recent years the problem has grown. In the 2016 United States of America Presidential election, Donald Trump began using the term to refer to any criticism that he received, stating that it was all misinformation and “fake news”. A study by Rubin, Chen and Conroy (2015) suggested that there are three types of fake news: serious fabrications, large scale hoaxes and humorous fakes. Humorous fabrications are the least serious and least impactful of the three; humorous fabrications are usually satirical articles that pokes fun at various issues. The website theonion.com is one such website that employs the use of humorous fabrications as a means of comedy. An example of a satirical headline used by the website is “New Law Requires Welfare Recipients To Submit Sweat To Prove How Hard They’re Looking For Job”. This example of a humorous fabrication is clearly not real news and although that it counts as fake news, it does not have a negative impact on society.

On the other hand, serious fabrications and large-scale hoaxes are an issue in society, as people believe that the articles are genuine and are pieces of real news. Serious fabrications include fraudulent reporting, where news sources misinterpret a story and/or statistics to change the narrative of the story. For example, tabloid newspapers aim to sensationalise stories and neglect to add in crucial details (Zelizer et al., 2000) – this leads to news that is not factually correct and misleads the reader. Large-scale hoaxes are where ideas that have no basis in truth and are designed to deceive the public are picked up by the media as genuine news. These items of fake news are the ones that are most commonly thought of when referring to the term “fake news”. People such as Alex Jones, who states for example that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax and was a ploy by politicians to enforce stricter gun-control in the United States, use large-scale hoaxes to misinform the public and create divisions within society (Johnson, 2018). The internet facilities the spread of fake news, and with every year, technology and the internet become more and more accessible to people, exposing them websites that have no background standards, and are beset with unreliable sources and fake news (Lazer, 2018). It is easy to fall down the rabbit hole of confirming one’s own beliefs and with major companies such as Google and Facebook tailoring what you see to what you have already looked at (Steel & Fowler, 2010), confirmation bias is inevitable. This then creates an environment in which radical views are not challenged, and these beliefs gain weight in a person’s mind.

Large scale hoaxes largely pose a threat to society’s’ cohesion as they are believable and hard to identify when casually browsing the internet. According to a commission by the National Literary Trust (2018), only 2% of children have the critical literary skills to be able to identify fake news. This low number illustrates what an issue fake news is and how the issue is only getting worse. These types of fake news are hard to detect even when using specialised computer programmes that have been taught how to try to recognise fake news. The programme only had 63% accuracy when trying to detect fake news (Rubin, Conroy & Chen, 2015). With such low detection rates, it is no wonder that fake news is so influential. The more people fall for fake news stories, the more polarised society becomes – this is why it is important that fake news is able to be identified.

The Intervention

Our intervention took the form of highlighting the issue of fake news to students by creating a poster in the style of fake news. This included using the techniques employed in fake news that entice people to believe the message that we were trying to get across – how dangerous fake news is and how easy it is to believe it. We thought that a poster would be the most effective way to communicate to students, as there are many locations suitable to place them and electronic means of communication such as emails, tend to get buried under other departmental messages. We also chose to do the poster in the style of a fake news, as fake news posters tend to be eye catching and employ persuasive techniques in their aim to convince others. The information on the poster aimed to inform students about how to detect fake news, this information contained facts and statistics about fake news (e.g. the style of language and punctuation used in fake news) and techniques to distinguish it from factual news items.

The poster 

We planned to communicate identification techniques that would be relevant to their everyday media use such as providing links to fact-checking websites and encouraging online search for story corroboration, all of which can be conducted from their mobile phones. Our idea across the project was to exploit the existing behaviours and techniques that allows misinformation to spread to instead generate the spread of helpful, fake news identifying information. Therefore, it is tailored for those susceptible to misinformation because the intervention acts in the same ways that makes fake news so attractive to these audiences in the first place.

As a part of the poster, we also included at the bottom a link to a fact checking websites Fullfact.org and Factcheck.org. These websites provided a way for people to check information that is found on the internet. This is especially useful for student, a group of people who constantly are writing essays and rely on factual information. By providing a resource that students can go to, they can check the information found and ensure that it is from a legitimate source.

An image of Fullfact.org

We decided to target young people, as not only did we have greater access to a student population, but this generational cohort frequently access information online both recreationally and for education. For students, obtaining accurate and valid information is a priority. It would therefore be advantageous for this group who are reliable consumers of news stories to be able to distinguish between real and fake narratives. It has been suggested that young people are also particularly vulnerable to fake news as the amount of information available to them in the world, as a result of the internet, makes it even harder to categorise the possible from the impossible (Burkhardt, 2017). Furthermore, this generation falls within the ‘engaged youth paradigm’, describing this cohort as empowered agents who can contribute and receive information instantaneously online (Marchi, 2012). This process is also known as information proliferation, which can have negative ramifications when dealing with attractive misinformation. It is these conditions which may predispose students to the dangers of fake news consumption more so than other groups. 

We hung the posters up around the University of Warwick campus so that people could look at them when walking around. The posters were placed inside the Humanities department, outside the Library and outside of the Chaplaincy, these are common paths that students walk through in order to get to lectures and so would be exposed to the posters on multiple occasions. As shown by the image above of the poster, it was designed to be eye grabbing and get people to stop.  

Persuasion Techniques

Heuristics

A consistent pattern we encountered was that fake news almost entirely relied on system 1, heuristic processing. These are processes which are automatic, fast, uncontrolled and unconscious. It has been suggested that attitude change can occur through two distinct pathways, systematic, characterised as effortful and controlled, or through the formally described heuristic processes. (Chaiken et al, 1989). This theoretical model also underlies the Elaboration-Likelihood model by Petty and Cacioppo (1979), which proposes two routes to persuasion dependent on the processing taken by the individual. The style of fake news tends to align with the heuristic peripheral route, which relies on more superficial and attention-grabbing items that require limited processing. This means less intellectual elaboration occurs on the message presented, increasing susceptibility to unscientific and unsubstantiated claims. Research from Horne and Adali (2017) analysing fake news, hypothesise that this information exploits the peripheral route, as the content packs all substance and claims into headlines and ignores logical, sound arguments in the actual article text. As the focus is on the exaggerated, personal and repetitive title instead of the following argument, it is likely fake news attempts to persuade through system 1 pathways. We used this technique in our poster, making the headline the central focus. We also made it personalised by targeting ‘Warwick students’ and placing a stock photo of a working student with a bold, capitalised pronoun ‘YOU?’ pointing at it. The same researchers also found fake news to be heavily self-referential and personalised, and so we tried to include as many personal pronouns as possible such as ‘we’ and ‘you’, and highlighting them wherever possible.

The Availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) is another relevant process we decided to take advantage of. The idea being that the easier something is to recall or come to mind (sometimes mediated by repeated exposure), the more it is perceived to be important and true. The problem therefore with consideration to the proliferation of fake news stories is that the more they are shared, the more they will be believed. Moreover, Pennycook, Cannon and Rand (2017) reported that even just reading a fake news headline one time was enough to increase the belief in its accuracy. This research also demonstrated that even despite the fact that fake news is often unrealistic in nature, simple repeated exposure to such headlines can still increase the perception of accuracy, regardless of implausibility. This technique becomes even more effective when coupled with a Spinozan procedural framework, a belief procedure in which comprehension and acceptance are thought to occur simultaneously. Unacceptance, and the ability to recognise falsehoods are thus a secondary process (Gilbert, 1991). Consequently, as fake news promotes heuristic, automatic processing and reduces elaboration, it is unlikely that these secondary processes are engaged when exposed to this type of misinformation. This truth bias and belief system when combined, can accelerate the sharing and acceptance of fake news. Therefore, we tried to distribute our heuristic exploiting poster around campus wherever possible, in places such as the library and the common room, to increase the likelihood of repeated exposure.

Social Identity Theory

Another technique that we employed within our poster was Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1974). Social Identity Theory states that every person is a member of multiple groups (in-groups), in which people identify with, and that everyone who is not a part of these in-groups, are members of an out-group. In-group and out-group members are in competition with other and this is expressed in everyday interactions. Those in the in-group help each other as this increases in-group self-esteem and strengthens the bonds within the in-group. When a member of the in-group achieves something positive, this increases group self esteem due to a phenomenon known as “basking in reflected glory” (Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman & Sloan, 1976). Likewise, when members of an outgroup do something negative, the in-group will apply this to all members of the out-group, generalising them, in order to raise the esteem of the in-group.

Social identity theory has been linked to fake news, as the consequence of fake news is the creation of polarisation and differences between the groups being highlighted (Schulz, Wirth & Müller, 2018). The information in fake news is targeted towards people with already existing similar beliefs and this news is often targeted against other out-groups.

Ensuring that the image and esteem of the group is kept, is a factor in the consumption and believability of fake news. The Social Identity Maintenance Model (Turner & Pratkanis, 1998) states that a group has a lot of motivation to keep the positive esteem of the group as it increases cohesion. Groupthink (Janis, 1972) is used where views that may be harmful, are not challenged in order to maintain this group cohesion. This is used in fake news as by pushing views that may not be shared by the entire group, as being important and true and to maintain group cohesion, people do not speak out against the fake news.  Some of the symptoms of Groupthink decision making include: “selective information bias, a failure to reappraise and poor information search” (Janis, 1972), all issues outlined when identifying the issues with fake news.

We applied Social Identity Theory using in-groups and out-groups to our poster by invoking in-group feelings. The headline for the poster was “Are Warwick students literally being LIED to by FAKE news??!!! Science suggests WE ARE!!!”. This title was designed using terms such as “we” as this places people into the in-group. The title specifically targeted Warwick University students, as this was the target audience that the poster was aimed for. Additionally, as Warwick students ourselves, this placed us in the in-group and made the point trying to be made more salient as it was from a trusted source (James & Greenberg, 1989). We also used sentences such as “WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?”. This was designed to create animosity towards a (non-existent) out-group. This once again, should add salience towards the information being said. “DO YOU ALREADY BELIEVE IT!? I Certainly do”, this sentence was aimed to get students to think about how one member of the group had already thought about the plausibility of the statement (us), and now in order to maintain cohesion within the group, they needed to agree with the statement too.

The Future of Our Project

Overall, our project went well. Students were receptive to the posters and people who knew that we were doing the project asked us for more information because it caught their attention. Fake news is an ever growing issue and they wanted to know how best to detect it. Although our poster was an exaggerated version of the fake news concept, the interest demonstrated how pervasive it is in society today.  

A student enquiring about the poster

The future directions we would consider taking still involve applying this fake news paradigm. Ideas include making the poster into an online article that follows the typical style of fake news, but if you click on the headline it would instead send you to a fact checking website. Therefore, system 1 processing still attracts you to the information, but your engagement with the piece will bring you to content that ends up encouraging system 2, analytical thinking. This may work as Pennycook et al, also found that when providing participants with reason to be sceptical, the perceived accuracy of fake news stories they were later exposed to was reduced. We could also use the internet to start a group or petition that encourages users to ‘read beyond the headline’. A petition could stimulate the committed behaviours that result from implementation intentions (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). An explicit statement of intention to critically attend to information on social media may actually increase the occurrence of this behaviour.

A more macro consideration would be trying to increase analytical thinking across the board when dealing with any information that is being spread. The current research concludes that active analytical thinking mediates the relationship between fake news and its acceptance. (Pennycook & Rand, 2017). However, humans are cognitive misers and rely on heuristic processing for adaptive reasons, which is one of the justifications for why we used fake news tactics in the first place. Therefore, this issue will be hard to solve, especially without compromising human choice. 

Our Posters in Action

Inside of the Humanities Building

Outside of the Library 

Outside of the Chaplaincy 

Our Project Timeline

22/01/19 - Came up with project idea

26/01/19 - Researched fake news techniques 

28/01/19 - Started working on poster

05/02/19- Finished poster

11/02/19- Distributed poster around campus 

11/02/19- Started to work on blog post 

24/02/19- Finished blog post

References

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Chaiken, S. (1989). Heuristic and systematic information processing within and beyond the persuasion context. Unintended thought, 212-252.

Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of personality and social psychology, 34(3), 366.

Gilbert, D. T. (1991). How mental systems believe. American psychologist, 46(2), 107

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta‐analysis of effects and processes. Advances in experimental social psychology, 38, 69-119.

Horne, B. D., & Adali, S. (2017, May). This just in: fake news packs a lot in title, uses simpler, repetitive content in text body, more similar to satire than real news. In Eleventh International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.

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Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of groupthink: a psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes.

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Most popular fake election stories in the United States in 2016, by Facebook engagement (in thousands). In Statista - The statistics portal. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/657757/most-viewed-fake-news-election/

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