Study finds progressives more susceptible to fake news

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Study finds progressives more susceptible to fake news

The public at Seoul Station in downtown Seoul watches President Yoon Suk Yeol makes a New Year speech on Jan. 1. One of the fake articles that was presented for the survey study on confirmation bias was President Yoon being the first Korean president to not hold a New Year’s press conference. [NEWS1]

The public at Seoul Station in downtown Seoul watches President Yoon Suk Yeol makes a New Year speech on Jan. 1. One of the fake articles that was presented for the survey study on confirmation bias was President Yoon being the first Korean president to not hold a New Year’s press conference. [NEWS1]

A study has found that people with progressive tendencies were more susceptible to fake news than their conservative counterparts.
 
The survey company STI conducted a survey of 1,056 people between the ages of 18 and 69 between March 10 and 16 on media consumption and political tendencies.  
 
The survey participants were given four news articles — a true article and a fake article favorable to conservatives, and a true article and a fake article favorable to progressives.
  
The real article favorable to progressives was published by the Economist Intelligence Unit in February.
 
The article on the Democracy Index 2022 reported how Korea’s democracy level dropped eight notches last year, the first year of conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol.  
 
The fake news article favorable to progressives claimed Yoon was the first Korean president not to hold a New Year’s press conference, when in fact Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye held no such press conference, either.
 
The true article favorable to conservatives reported how the Democratic Party (DP) held back the launching of a North Korean human rights foundation by refusing to recommend a board member for the 7th year.
  
The fake article favorable to conservatives claimed that former President Moon Jae-in secretly wired $600 million to North Korea.
  
While several conservative YouTubers made this accusation, it was clearly fake news based on uncertain sources.  
 
Survey participants graded the articles on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being completely false and 5 being completely true.  
 
The study found that the participants graded the stories based on their political beliefs rather than on facts.
 
The study also found that DP supporters tended to blindly trust the articles favorable to their side, regardless of veracity. 

 
For the two articles critical of the current conservative government, DP supporters graded the real one 3.74 and the fake one 3.75.  
 
Likewise, they strongly distrusted the stories favorable to conservatives, even when they were true. 

 
For the real news favorable to conservatives, they gave the article a grade of 2.39 and the fake news a grade of 2.08.  
 
Supporters of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) tended to be more cautious regarding both true and fake news. 
 
PPP supporters gave the true article favorable to conservatives a grade of 3.18 and the fake one a grade of 3.65.  
 
PPP supporters gave similar marks to the stories favorable to progressives, grading the true one at 3.08 and the fake one 2.8.  
 
The STI said it narrowed down 156 participants in the survey who demonstrated confirmation bias.  
 
These are people who have strong beliefs and only select information that matches their preconceptions.
 
Participants with confirmation bias gave high grades of 4 or 5 to fake news articles that matched their political preferences while giving low grades of 1 or 2 to real stories that ran counter to their preferences.
 
Among the 303 respondents who supported the DP, 36.5 percent or 110 demonstrated strong confirmation biases. Among the 253 who supported the PPP, 18 percent or 46 demonstrated confirmation biases.
 
This shows that DP supporters tend to demonstrate stronger confirmation biases than their PPP counterparts.  
 
Respondents in their 50s and 60s had the strongest confirmation biases, with both accounting for 29 percent of total respondents with confirmation bias.  
 
Respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 accounted for just 9.9 percent of those with confirmation bias, while those in their 30s accounted for 12.9 percent and those in their 40s for 18.5 percent.  
 
In the study, 21.8 percent of respondents with confirmation bias said they get information on political or social issues from YouTube. Among respondents judged freer from confirmation bias, only 8.1 percent got their information from YouTube.  
 
This matches a study by the Korea Institute of Public Administration in January when it found that 65.5 percent of fake news is spread through social media such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
 
“Most social media including YouTube uses algorithms that provide information that matches the preference of users, and this builds a person’s confirmation bias,” said Lee Sang-shin, a Korea Institute for National Unification researcher who specializes in political science.  
 
Political confirmation biases seem to be getting stronger regardless of political beliefs.
 
Among respondents with confirmation bias, nearly 63 percent said their political tendencies are growing stronger than in the past, with 30.4 percent responding that this was especially so.
 
Yet of the respondents with confirmation bias, nearly 27 percent denied that they had such a bias. 
 
That means a quarter of respondents with confirmation bias believed they are objective.  
 
Among respondents without confirmation bias, only 16 percent denied being biased.  
 
“There is clearly confirmation bias among highly political people in their 50s and 60s who are emersed in YouTube,” said Lee Jun-ho, STI CEO.  
  
BY OH HYUN-SEOK, JEONG YOUNG-HWAN [jeong.younghwan1@joongang.co.kr]
 
 

BY OH HYUN-SEOK, JEONG YOUNG-HWAN [jeong.younghwan1@joongang.co.kr]
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