ABSTRACT

Consumers’ engagement with fake news has impacted the way consumers process information about brands on the Internet. The purpose of this article is to analyze the factors that affect the amount of cognitive processing of fake news. Two experimental studies were carried out. Study 1 participants were invited to look at web pages, while those in Study 2 had access to information on social networks (Facebook and Twitter). In both studies, eye movements were measured to examine cognitive processing tasks. The participants’ gaze behavior was used to assess the amount of cognitive processing and the reduction of intentional control, for different levels of consumer brand engagement. The results demonstrate that the presence of fake news increases the amount of cognitive processing of the viewer. Furthermore, the reduction in intentional control is less with fake news than with real news. Finally, the findings indicate that high consumer engagement with the brand results in a greater amount of cognitive processing of fake news. The results of this study demonstrate that the exposure of fake news involving certain brands may have a greater effect on sustaining visual cognition than real news.

摘要

消费者对假新闻的参与影响了消费者在互联网上处理品牌信息的方式。本文旨在分析影响假新闻认知加工量的因素。进行了两项实验研究。研究 1 的参与者被邀请查看网页，而研究 2 的参与者可以访问社交网络（Facebook 和 Twitter）上的信息。在这两项研究中，都测量了眼球运动以检查认知处理任务。参与者的注视行为被用来评估不同层次的消费者品牌参与的认知处理量和有意控制的减少。结果表明，假新闻的存在增加了观众的认知处理量。此外，与真实新闻相比，假新闻减少了故意控制。最后，研究结果表明，消费者对品牌的高度参与会导致对假新闻的认知处理量更大。这项研究的结果表明，涉及某些品牌的假新闻的曝光可能比真实新闻对维持视觉认知的影响更大。