ABSTRACT

This study determined the items that could predict university students’ susceptibility to disinformation (e.g., fake news). Toward this goal, randomly-selected students from the four private universities in Manila answered a content-validated and pilot-tested survey form. Through binary logistic regression analysis, it was found that frequent visits to Instagram, sharing a political post of a friend, and liking a post of a political party could increase the susceptibility of students to fake news. On the other hand, sharing the post of a political party, and seeking the opinion of experts could decrease the susceptibility of students to fake news. Of these items, liking a post with a similar opinion of a political party – a confirmation bias – had the highest contribution to fake news susceptibility of students. It is worth noting that the most reliable source of information, i.e. the library, is the least utilized fact-checking resource. It can be concluded that technological, internal, and external factors contribute either positively or negatively to the susceptibility of students to fake news. Implications to combat fake news are offered.

摘要

这项研究确定了可以预测大学生对虚假信息（例如，假新闻）易感性的项目。为实现这一目标，来自马尼拉四所私立大学的随机选择的学生回答了一份内容验证和试点测试的调查表。通过二元逻辑回归分析发现，频繁访问 Instagram、分享朋友的政治帖子和喜欢某个政党的帖子会增加学生对假新闻的敏感性。另一方面，分享政党的职位，征求专家的意见，可以降低学生对假新闻的敏感性。在这些项目中，喜欢与政党观点相似的帖子——确认偏差——对学生的假新闻敏感性的贡献最大。值得注意的是，最可靠的信息来源，即图书馆，是使用最少的事实核查资源。可以得出结论，技术、内部和外部因素对学生对假新闻的易感性有正面或负面的影响。提供了打击假新闻的启示。