ABSTRACT

During the 2016 United States presidential election, social media was a popular source of political news. In the three months preceding the election day, there was an exponential increase in the propagation of fake political news stories on social media. Using propaganda theory as the situating framework, this study conducts a qualitative textual analysis of 18 of the most popular of these fake news stories. The results reveal how propagandist elements were used to mislead readers, likely activating heuristic rather than systematic psychological information processing. We propose for further testing a theoretical model of heuristic processing of political fake news that may help explain how such news compels belief.

抽象的

在2016年美国总统大选期间，社交媒体是政治新闻的热门来源。在选举日之前的三个月中，社交媒体上虚假政治新闻报道的传播呈指数增长。本研究使用宣传理论作为情境框架，对这些假新闻中最流行的18个新闻故事进行了定性的文本分析。结果表明，宣传元素是如何被用来误导读者的，可能会激活启发式而不是系统的心理信息处理。我们建议进一步测试启发式处理政治假新闻的理论模型，这可能有助于解释此类新闻如何促使人们相信信仰。