Political party affiliation and education levels directly correlate to perception of fake...

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: Today’s hyper-connected landscape and modern amenities have made it easier to share information than any other time in history yet as more and more people are coming to realize, not everything should be taken as gospel.

According to a recent Gallup / Knight Foundation survey of 1,440 Gallup Panel members, Americans believe that 39 percent of the news they read in newspapers, see on television and hear on the radio is misinformation – stories that are made up or cannot be verified as accurate despite being presented as fact. Furthermore, they feel that 65 percent of news shared on social media is misinformation.

The survey, conducted between February 5 and March 11, 2018, also found that 76 percent of US adults believe major Internet companies have an obligation to identify fake news that appears on their platforms with a slim majority feeling the identification of misinformation is one of their most important responsibilities.

The survey also highlights a correlation between education levels and the perception that news is fake. In short, those with less education are more skeptical of what they read in newspapers, see on TV and hear on the radio. Similar trends were also observed as it relates to political party affiliation.

Survey data / charts courtesy Gallup / Knight Foundation

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https://www.techspot.com/news/75176-political-party-affiliation-education-levels-directly-correlate-perception.html

 

[Evernessince]

" In short, those with less education are more skeptical of what they read in newspapers, see on TV and hear on the radio. Similar trends were also observed as it relates to political party affiliation."

For the less educated it's more about not being able to tell the difference between real and fake news. You'd be surprised how many people with only a high school education don't know how to track down and verify sources.

For those in a political party, specifically Republican in this case, anchoring is likely the cause of why that number is so high. Once humans identify with a group, they are much more lenient towards members of that group, and will defend people who are apart of it even if they don't know them on a personal level. This has been studied numerous times and even test subjects assigned to a random group of strangers start exhibiting this behavior immediately.

 

[Jeff Re]

Too bad uneducated people aren't skeptical of the worst fake news.

 

[psycros]

" In short, those with less education are more skeptical of what they read in newspapers, see on TV and hear on the radio. Similar trends were also observed as it relates to political party affiliation."

For the less educated it's more about not being able to tell the difference between real and fake news. You'd be surprised how many people with only a high school education don't know how to track down and verify sources.

For those in a political party, specifically Republican in this case, anchoring is likely the cause of why that number is so high. Once humans identify with a group, they are much more lenient towards members of that group, and will defend people who are apart of it even if they don't know them on a personal level. This has been studied numerous times and even test subjects assigned to a random group of strangers start exhibiting this behavior immediately.

Why would you only apply the "anchoring" theory to one party? From what I've observed groupthink is just as prevalent among Democrats. Among the more liberal ones its practically a religion. The thing we have to remember is that politicians are first and foremost self-serving. If their schemes and policies just happen to benefit a particular group of people that's a side effect. Our political elite are also our business elite, our academic elite, our media elite, etc. There's precious little objectivity to be found at the top.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Is it not illegal to lie about official business without some kind of disclaimer?
I know the numbers above are skewed because of the left's pure hatred of a single person. That is quite comical. Also serious because their next vote will be blinded by their own hate.

 

[Teko03]

I know the numbers above are skewed because of the left's pure hatred of a single person. That is quite comical. Also serious because their next vote will be blinded by their own hate.

Prime example...."the lefts", "the rights". Just like this one man has received so much hate, another man received so much hate for 8 straight years. People blindly pledge their allegiance to "democrat" or "liberal" and most of them have no idea what it even means or entails. Most of the time they don't have a problem with their ideas or their policies...it's a matter of red or blue.

I can't leave this post without noting that one of those men rightfully deserves at least some of the hate he gets with the stuff that comes out of his mouth...just saying.

 

[ShagnWagn]

I know the numbers above are skewed because of the left's pure hatred of a single person. That is quite comical. Also serious because their next vote will be blinded by their own hate.

Prime example...."the lefts", "the rights". Just like this one man has received so much hate, another man received so much hate for 8 straight years. People blindly pledge their allegiance to "democrat" or "liberal" and most of them have no idea what it even means or entails. Most of the time they don't have a problem with their ideas or their policies...it's a matter of red or blue.

I can't leave this post without noting that one of those men rightfully deserves at least some of the hate he gets with the stuff that comes out of his mouth...just saying.

Conversely one of those men deserves of the hate he gets with the stuff that he consistently failed at for 8 years (not just his mouth, as it was all teleprompter anyway).

I'm just silly quoting, but nobody deserves hate as hate=murder. In God's eyes anyway.

 

[antiproduct]

I wonder how many Russians have or are going to comment in this thread... political trolls in 3....2...1...

 

[Xtreme gamer]

But I thought uneducated people would believe anything that they read. Because they are dumb and don't read often.
Lol

 

[Danny101]

College universities and mainstream news are echo chambers of liberal thought. Hardly a fair survey. Until news in general becomes fair, honest, hard, and less opinionated, this divide will remain. The survey should be about policies, not about news. That's just asking for misinformation. We already know where news organizations stand, and that's a shame. Again, it's not just news anymore. It's propaganda.

 

[Evernessince]

" In short, those with less education are more skeptical of what they read in newspapers, see on TV and hear on the radio. Similar trends were also observed as it relates to political party affiliation."

For the less educated it's more about not being able to tell the difference between real and fake news. You'd be surprised how many people with only a high school education don't know how to track down and verify sources.

For those in a political party, specifically Republican in this case, anchoring is likely the cause of why that number is so high. Once humans identify with a group, they are much more lenient towards members of that group, and will defend people who are apart of it even if they don't know them on a personal level. This has been studied numerous times and even test subjects assigned to a random group of strangers start exhibiting this behavior immediately.

Why would you only apply the "anchoring" theory to one party? From what I've observed groupthink is just as prevalent among Democrats. Among the more liberal ones its practically a religion. The thing we have to remember is that politicians are first and foremost self-serving. If their schemes and policies just happen to benefit a particular group of people that's a side effect. Our political elite are also our business elite, our academic elite, our media elite, etc. There's precious little objectivity to be found at the top.

Because the data shows it.

"Our political elite are also our business elite, our academic elite, our media elite, etc. There's precious little objectivity to be found at the top."

Yet republican voters elected a Business / Media elite democrat to the head of the country. I hear the outrage against the elite yet those same people also elected a man who is the definition of what they hate and all he had to do is act like he hated what they all hate.

 

[Evernessince]

College universities and mainstream news are echo chambers of liberal thought. Hardly a fair survey. Until news in general becomes fair, honest, hard, and less opinionated, this divide will remain. The survey should be about policies, not about news. That's just asking for misinformation. We already know where news organizations stand, and that's a shame. Again, it's not just news anymore. It's propaganda.

All you are doing here is postulating. I've seen this same comment hundreds of times all without roots in the ground.

 

[Danny101]

For those in a political party, specifically Republican in this case, anchoring is likely the cause of why that number is so high. Once humans identify with a group, they are much more lenient towards members of that group, and will defend people who are apart of it even if they don't know them on a personal level. This has been studied numerous times and even test subjects assigned to a random group of strangers start exhibiting this behavior immediately.

Your bias is showing. As if Democrats aren't guilty. Ironically, many Democrats in large numbers have moved to the Republican side in the case of Trump. Not sure what anchoring would mean in this case. Please explain. Ideally, I would rather Techspot steer clear of these topics. This is one of the few places where we have some camaraderie away from politics, which the discussion is devolving as we speak. Politics is constant and there are few sanctuaries.

 

[fadingfool]

Only 39% - 100% is misinformation (especially this comment). Seriously though all this survey shows is that the more time you have spent in education the more credulous of news stories you are - almost as if your capacity for critical thinking has been eroded by an education system that promotes emotive rhetoric over logic. Pink Floyd tried to warn us.

 

[Bubbajim]

Only 39% - 100% is misinformation (especially this comment). Seriously though all this survey shows is that the more time you have spent in education the more credulous of news stories you are - almost as if your capacity for critical thinking has been eroded by an education system that promotes emotive rhetoric over logic. Pink Floyd tried to warn us.

Quite the opposite. Education equips you with a better bullsh*t detector, and thus you're better able to recognise credible sources, fact check, and sniff out bias. Why people think that today's media is more corrupt and fake than ever before is baffling to me. In the era of on-the-ground reporting and the ubiquitous smartphone camera, it's probably more accurate than ever. The political spin remains, and of course different news outlets have their own slants or frames of reference, but that's exactly what education allows you to see past.

The troubling thing is the rate at which bullsh*t spreads - about 10 times faster than facts - as it's more salacious, and more scandalous. The problem of "fake news" is a population-level mess, not just the media.

 

[fadingfool]

Quite the opposite. Education equips you with a better bullsh*t detector, and thus you're better able to recognise credible sources, fact check, and sniff out bias. Why people think that today's media is more corrupt and fake than ever before is baffling to me. In the era of on-the-ground reporting and the ubiquitous smartphone camera, it's probably more accurate than ever. The political spin remains, and of course different news outlets have their own slants or frames of reference, but that's exactly what education allows you to see past.

The troubling thing is the rate at which bullsh*t spreads - about 10 times faster than facts - as it's more salacious, and more scandalous. The problem of "fake news" is a population-level mess, not just the media.

Not quite - I can't see anything in the survey that accounts for age of the respondents. Education levels are frequently correlated with age as there are more opportunities to stay in education these days. As such the "lack of education" and incredulous quotient is actually an age incredulous quotient hidden within the stats of the survey. This would be easily explainable as age tends to impart wisdom (all other things being equal).
Remember correlation does not equal causation. Hence the conclusions of this survey fall into the "not even wrong" category.

 

[Reachable]

This is an unprecedented situation. In the past it was always the more educated who were the most skeptical. Today the less educated are not only encouraged to believe the fabricated and fictitious, but also to disbelieve the well reported and documented. There's a much more sophisticated psychological operation going on.

The mainstream media (say, CNN or CBS) is hardly leftist or progressive. They're controlled by the elite. Their sins are largely sins of omission (not reporting inconvenient truths) or interpreting current events by going along with the prevailing narrative. The ultra right these days is not just the trashy tabloids with their distracting sensationalism and doctrinal preaching within the news articles, but also the Fox News television network and the entire huge web of Internet sites like Breitbart.

It's a huge desperate front waged by those who are terrified of what an emerging truth would mean.

 

[Danny101]

Everyone has a political leaning. I lean conservative. Yet, even I had to defend Obama on a few occasions because groups were taking snippets of his speeches to make it sound like he was saying one thing when in the context of his full speech, he was saying something quite different. Something I did agree with. The problem with bias is not following up on the claim to get the full picture. This isn't education dependant, it's intellectual laziness. Criticism is mute without the full picture and all the facts laid-bare.

 

[treetops]

Wow 35% of people treat facebook shared news posts as fact. That's scary, anyone can make up anything on FB present it as the news and get it shared.

 

[Impudicus]

It's been a long time since I've seen any new outlet simply report all know facts. They seem to only use the facts the support a desired narrative. Either a political bias or to simply generate more hype to get more clicks on the story. They always try to connect facts to opinions. This has seemingly become the standard to all new outlets these days. If you want the whole story you have to read all the news and put something together yourself.