Motivated Fake News Perception: The Impact of News Sources and Policy Support on Audiences’ Assessment of News Fakeness

2020/08/31 by Stephanie Jean Tsang · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social Media and Politics #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection

paper · doi:10.1177/1077699020952129

openalex publication_date 2020/08/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

An online experiment ( N = 280) exposed participants in Hong Kong to an anti-police WhatsApp news message during the extradition bill controversy. Although source verification is commonly recommended as a strategy to avoid being deceived by fake news, the findings did not reveal that the news source (legacy news outlet vs. online forum vs. no source) impacted the perceived fakeness of the news message. Nonetheless, participants holding opposing stances were found to perceive the same news message to be fake to significantly varying degrees, providing evidence that motivated reasoning plays in the spread of fake news.

Citations

• When Attention‐Getting Advertising Tactics Elicit Consumer Inferences of Manipulative Intent: The Importance of Balancing Benefits and Investments
• The Influence of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Public Opinion
• Message Properties, Mediating States, and Manipulation Checks: Claims, Evidence, and Data Analysis in Experimental Persuasive Message Effects Research
• The case for motivated reasoning.
• Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election
• Misconceptions, Misinformation, and the Logic of Identity-Protective Cognition
• Fake News and The Economy of Emotions
• Defining “Fake News”
• A REPORT OF THE 2019 HONG KONG PROTESTS

Cited by

• Fake news [wikipedia]
• Hostile media effect [wikipedia]

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