Falling for fake news: the role of political bias and cognitive ability

Edson C. Tandoc; James Lee; Matthew Chew; Fan Xi Tan; Zhang Hao Goh

doi:10.1080/01292986.2021.1941149

Falling for fake news: the role of political bias and cognitive ability

Edson C. Tandoc, James Lee, Matthew Chew, Fan Xi Tan, Zhang Hao Goh

Division of Communication & Media

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Through a nationally representative survey involving 855 social media users in Singapore, this study proposes and tests a framework to explain why people believe in fake news. Guided by work on dual process models that theorize that individuals engage in either thorough or automatic processing, this study finds that both cognitive ability and political bias predict the extent to which individuals fall for fake news. While both exert direct effects on the extent to which individuals believe in fake news, they also exert indirect effects through how they lead individuals to different news consumption patterns.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	237-253
Number of pages	17
Journal	Asian Journal of Communication
Volume	31
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2021.1941149
State	Published - 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by Singapore Ministry of Education Tier 1 Grant: [Grant Number RG 150/18]; Singapore Social Science Research Council: [Grant Number MOE2018-SSRTG-022].

Publisher Copyright:
© AMIC/WKWSCI-NTU 2021.

Keywords

Cognitive bias
disinformation
fake news
Singapore
social media
survey

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10.1080/01292986.2021.1941149

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AU - Tan, Fan Xi

AU - Goh, Zhang Hao

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by Singapore Ministry of Education Tier 1 Grant: [Grant Number RG 150/18]; Singapore Social Science Research Council: [Grant Number MOE2018-SSRTG-022]. Publisher Copyright: © AMIC/WKWSCI-NTU 2021.

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Falling for fake news: the role of political bias and cognitive ability

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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