Everyday encounters with misinformation online: examining sources, topics and modes
Australians routinely encounter misinformation in their everyday online lives, and it's not just limited to politics or pandemics, according to new research in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Center in Brisbane.
PAPER PUBLISHED IN
Information, Communication & Society
PRODUCED BY
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
AUTHORS
Aimee Hourigan, Queensland University of Technology
T.J. Thomson, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Tanya Notley, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
Sora Park, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia
Michael Dezuanni, Queensland University of Technology
ABSTRACT
Misinformation research tends to be topic-driven, focused on a narrow band of sources and media formats, and studied in abstraction from individuals’ everyday lives. In contrast, this study examines adults’ in situ encounters with suspected misinformation to better understand how it is experienced in daily life. Through a digital diary study, we collected examples of news and information participants encounter and identify as false, misleading or untrustworthy. Participants encountered misinformation about ‘everyday’ topics, like business and economics, and in varying modalities, like text-based and multimodal formats. Further, participants’ everyday perceptions of misinformation are shaped by changing news logics, as evidenced by their identification of mainstream and alternative news sources as prominent propagators of false and misleading content. These findings raise questions about the influence of sociocultural and sociotechnical factors in shaping online users’ perceptions and experiences of misinformation.
The Internet is central to an ever-increasing number of activities, including shopping, finding entertainment, getting news, connecting with friends and family, working and learning. In the words of Geoff, one of our participants, ‘I probably couldn't live without the Internet because my whole existence is entangled in it.’ Like many people, Geoff starts his day by monitoring online news and activity in his social networks. While online, he encounters trustworthy content as well as news and information that he regards with suspicion. ‘In this day and age, there's a lot of that fake news,’ he says.
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