Countering Disinformation or Countering Fake News? A Framing Experiment

• In Event: The Limits of Free Expression on Social Media

Abstract

There have been growing concerns about disinformation or fake news flooding the internet in recent years in many democracies. A number of governments have been discussing approaches to counter disinformation or fake news and build citizen resilience against malicious information on the internet. Political scientists on the other hand have been testing the effectiveness of different approaches to help protect people from false information on the internet.

However, in this context less is known about citizens general approval of government policies to counter disinformation or fake news on the internet. Do citizens consider disinformation an important problem? Do they expect governments to protect them from malicious information or are they suspicious of state interventions as they fear governments to be meddling with freedom of speech? What affects approval of government approaches to boost people’s resilience against disinformation or fake news on the internet and take action against a growing problem?

In this paper, based on a split-ballot experiment as part of the Vote Compass post-election survey administered by Vox Pop Labs in the context of the 2023 general election in New Zealand, I in particular test if the language that governments use in their fight against malicious information on the internet matters for voters’ approval of governments taking action against false information on the internet.

New Zealand thereby seems to be an especially interesting case for this as the government has recently appointed an advisory panel to the Department of the Prime Minister which has been entrusted to develop strategies to strengthen the country’s resilience against mis- and disinformation.

After a randomization of the sample, half of the respondents were asked “Should the government take action against fake-news on the internet?”, whereas the other half of the survey participants were asked “Should the government take action against disinformation on the internet?”. Respondents could indicate their approval of government action against disinformation respectively fake news on a 5-point scale ranging from “Strongly agree” to “Somewhat agree” to “Neither”, “Somewhat disagree”, and “Strongly disagree”, as well as “Don’t know.”

I find that the framing indeed matters for respondents’ approval of government action against false information and that governments need to very carefully communicate when it comes to the problem of false information on the internet and choose their words wisely when they want citizen to support their actions. While several researchers have argued in recent years that social scientists should stop studying fake news, as the term would lack clarity, and speak of disinformation instead, respondents show higher approval rates of government action against fake news than against disinformation.

Apart from that, approval of government intervention in general depends on the extent to which respondents believe that false information on the internet is a problem. Whether people approve governments taking action in principal is also impacted by factors such as education, political interest, respondents trust in social media and politicians, party identification, and whether their preferred party is currently in government or not. In New Zealand approval additionally varies by ethnic background. The indigenous Māori population, who to a higher extent than the Pākehā population is affected by defamatory information about their demographic group on the internet, more strongly demands government action against both disinformation and fake news though their trust in government and politicians is usually lower.

Author

• Mona Krewel, Victoria University of Wellington