if anything gut feeling is 100% a reinforcement of your existing prejudices and beliefs. like the 'false news' folks who think any news item that challenges their world view is wrong on principal.
If you look at the actual headlines that respondents were presented with, this was an exercise in common sense. Real headlines included topics like the EU being viewed positively around the world, while fake headlines included topics like Ebola being caused by US nuclear weapon testing. If you believe headlines just because they agree with your worldview, then yeah...you are susceptible to misinformation and clickbait. Seems like a fair enough measurement, all things considered.
Idk, the one about Morocco’s king appointing a committee to tackle inequality? Sure it’s plausible, but if they’re discussing the ability to discern real vs. fake news based on the plausibility of a headline then it’s not accurate to use that as a measure to tell whether it’s fake news or not.
And as we've seen time and time again on reddit, people who only read the headline and go on gut feeling tend to end up making an ass out of themselves when they try to comment because they're missing all the context.
It doesn't work. This is a world filled with clickbait and "technically the truth" headlines meant to draw in clicks, not a real description of the content.
If we just go off of gut feelings then we are all falling for a lot of fake shit. All they need to do is just make it sound real enough. Then they rope you in, and slowly make it more and more crazy.
Like if you show me a headline saying JFK Jr is secretly alive, and will come out of hiding to say he's secretly the vice president and Trump has been the president the whole time, I would say that's fucking crazy and false... but people fell for it. They trusted their gut instincts, and that slowly lead them to the point where they gathered outside for a week in Texas to wait for JFK Jr to come back. Because that's actually a thing that happened. Not even a joke.
So while it can be helpful, and should be listened to, you should also be willing to sometimes put it to the side and read an article every now and then.
Edit: I will say though, at some point it is worth disregarding. Like I know it's a fallacy to attack information because of the source... but some sources really just aren't worth listening to. So some site like Stormfront is posted, I won't beleive it till I see something else.
I scored perfect on it. The headlines that tell you how to feel about the content by making value judgments are fake news. Some one does something maliciously, or something was done to manipulate usually means fake news because it should be up to you as a reader to consume the content and from draw your own conclusions. But yes, evaluating sources is important, but headlines tell you a lot about the goals of the content.
I read the research paper and went through the questions.
More republicans correctly labelled 4/10 false headlines. More Democrats in 6/10 headlines.
More republicans correctly labelled 2/10 true headlines. More democrats in 8/10 headlines.
Young people in general labelled true headlines as false showing larger mistrust of media.
Most people who say they use the AP as a news source (55%) land in the highest-scoring category.
People who get their news from National Public Radio, Axios, HuffPost, and PBS are more likely than consumers of most other outlets to be in the highest-scoring group. Consumers of MSNBC, The Hill, Reuters, Politico, and the Washington Post also do comparatively well on the test.
worst performers generally are social media platforms. That includes Snapchat (53% of people who get news from it land in the lowest-scoring category), Truth Social (45%), WhatsApp (44%), TikTok (41%), and Instagram (38%).
The BI headline is clickbait which is to be expected from a 'news source' where company partners collaborate with journalists for 'leak' in order to undermine other partners for promotion.
The study isn't claiming this. They do not have sampling method that would make their results 1. Representative of single demographics or 2. Comparable between demographics. Business insider is just jerking off their boomer readers.
Yea, kind of worried this place is becoming an insecure knee-jerk reaction place just like reddit became post 2016. Like it's totally possible that boomers could better detect fake news. What's the big deal if so? No reason to take it so personally and start crying about Business Insider having an agenda. It's just ridiculous.
I'm a boomer and got 20/20. Could be because I have years more life (and headline-reading) experience. Zoomers are better at playing video games than I am.
It has more to do with where you regularly get your news than your age. It's just that Fox "News" and Facebook are the primary conspiracy and disinformation channels and the demographic for both of those skews older. TikTok is nearly as bad and as people continue to migrate to newer platforms I'm sure we'll see an associated uptick in misinformation assuming the platforms don't take active measures to curb it.
i would also guess the people who buy he most into bullshit are the ones who push it the hardest. people who recognize misinformation are going to just pass by it, not perpetuate it.
comments on tiktok are def as unhinged as those on fox news stories. with more emojis
Um i took the survey then pressed submit and nothing happened :( Idk if its because I put that I'm from Canada maybe they dont want my input lol
But ya some of those were obvious like "Government Officials Have Illegally Manipulated the Weather to Cause Devastating Storms" boy wonder if thats true or not /s but tbh other ones i wasnt super sure like the counties one bc im not sure how many counties are in the U.S.A. or whether that was a possible number? What is county vs district not sure.
Edit: i did it again in desktop mode (am on phone) and submitted it and it worked. Also i got 18/20.
The survey's available here if anybody's interested.
It's pretty much garbage, because it gives only headlines, and headlines are a terrible way to judge an article's legitimacy. All it takes is one shoddy study and some bad journalism to write an article about it, and you can get basically any headline you want.
Unfortunately I can't think of any examples off the top of my head right now.
When I did it on my phone I had to do it in desktop mode for it to submit/show the result idk if is just my phone but just in case anyone else is doing this on mobile
Who is making those claims and headlines is pretty important missing information. Let's take two examples: "New Study: Left-Wingers Are More Likely to Lie to Get a Higher Salary" and "New Study: Clear Relationship Between Eye Color and Intelligence".
If it was Fox News or The Sun, then either they are completely made up or the studies are terrible, or taken out of context.
But if the BBC or CNN had those headlines, then I would assume they would more than likely be true.
I can understand the general point. While Boomers are getting their news from disinformation sources like Fox News, they are still getting info about events actually going on, even if it's extremely skewed.
But TikTok for younger generations is just active hoaxes and made up information that has nothing to do with reality, not to mention extreme amounts of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
So, they both have their major issues. I suggest getting rid of Fox News and Tiktok! :P
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