Good news! We found that most people were able to accurately identify the real source as “real” (27/34) and the fake sources as “fake” (there were a total of 18 instances of someone falling for a fake news article). So maybe the situation isn’t as bad as some people (read: politicians) have implied. Perhaps there is hope for democracy after all!

But, of course, not everybody got it all right. We did have some people falling for our trap, and by asking them for their justification in validating or invalidating sources we got some key insights into their thought process. Let’s go source by source through all of the fake stories and highlight some of the more enlightening responses. If you haven’t checked out the “Usual Suspects” page first to read the sources over, we recommend you do that before reading further so you can understand what each of these articles was about. Also keep in mind that we did not have that many responses, and some articles differed by only a couple of votes. As such, take all our conclusions with a grain of salt- more research needs to be done!

 

SOURCE 1: “HIV BANANA”

We had 5 people who believed CNNews = CNN. Here’s what they had to say in response to the question “is this source legitimate?”:

• “Yes, because it is a very common news source”
• “Yes, because CNN is a credible news source”
• “I have preconceived biases towards CNN. I cannot give an accurate answer”
• “Initially yes, it says CNN”
• “CNN, if this is for sure CNN, is certainly more legit than Buzzfeed, or some stupid internet blog” (this person said they wanted to do more research but because they seem to be initially believing the source we wrote them down as a “yes”)

We also had one person say it was credible because they “reported the facts of what happened and seemed to remain objective”. Also one of our respondents apparently did their PhD thesis on HIV and, thank God, they got it right.

 

SOURCE 2: “TRUMP”

This one was more of a mixed bag. We had 5 people who believed it, but all for very different reasons. Check out their responses to the “is this source legitimate” question:

• “Sure, Trump is nuts this could be true”
• “It does seem legitimate because there are actual quotes”
• “Initially, yes, it says News 8 which sounds like a real news station”
• “I still do not recognize this source but the ALCU is credible”
• “Yes except for the fake that there is free medical care involved” (a bit of a jab at Trump perhaps?)

We also had a lot of people who gave us unclear answers and did not really answer the question. When presented with a murkier case, people tended to just say they would have to do more research on it. Which is good! But what if they had just seen this article in passing? Would they have legitimately done the research? We cannot truly know but it is worth pondering and perhaps something to think about for a future study. Note there are only two clear cases of partisan bias emerging here.

 

SOURCE 3: “ZUCKERBERG”

7 people believed this source to be legit, earning it the top spot as our most believed fake article! Again, the responses are super varied and some people are refusing to take sides. But what worries us most about this particular article is a lot of people mention “seeing this before”. This source is outright fake, so why did they say this? Did they see something similar and associate it with this through some kind of psychology mumbo jumbo? Or is this story actually spreading into their social media? It is an interesting question to ponder and requires more research. But anyways, here are the responses to the “is this source legitimate” question:

• “Yes this seems legitimate just based off of some conversations and concerns others have voiced to me”
• “Yes because I know this has been a problem”
• “It could be…” (this person earlier in the “initial thoughts” section said they had “heard aspects of this story before”)
• “Yes. The reporting seems unbiased”
• “Kind of, yes, again sounds realistic”
• “Yeah” (this person earlier expressed confusion, stating Facebook usually takes an “ambivalent tone” to tackling this issue but I suppose that wasn’t enough to stop them from believing it)
• “It does because I know that that was a problem Facebook was trying to fix within the past few years. I remember hearing about it and the statement is cited as well”

Interestingly, a vast majority of our respondents (24 out of 34) were liberal. So why was the source meant to target “right wingers” the most believed source in a vastly liberal audience? We think perhaps this has to do with a phenomenon discussed in one of our sources- people tend to actually be more critical of their own ideology! Kind of flies in the face of what most people believe to be the core of the issue doesn’t it? This has to do with knowledge, you know more about sources you agree with and therefore can point out faulty logic. Also, as previously mentioned the fact that most people “had seen this before” means it is either familiar to other stories or they have literally been exposed to it. This might also contribute to this being the most popular source.