This study explores how disinformation can dampen general users’ expressions of opinion online. In the context of a proven disinformation case in South Korea, this study analyzes externally validated click-logs of 1389 fake accounts and more than a million logs of 45,769 general users in a highly popular web portal. Findings show that the inflated visibility of anti-governmental opinions in the manipulated comment space was incongruent with the overall political tone that general users had spontaneously encountered from the broader media ecosystem beyond the manipulated space. Subsequently, this opinion “climate” incongruence decreased the likelihood of commenting in the manipulated space. The study concludes that false amplification (of the opinions that the manipulators promote) and false diminution (of general users’ political expressions) work in tandem to create a distorted opinion environment.

本研究探讨了虚假信息如何抑制一般用户在线表达意见。在韩国一个经过证实的虚假信息案例的背景下，本研究分析了一个非常受欢迎的门户网站中 1389 个虚假账户的外部验证点击日志和 45,769 个普通用户的超过一百万个日志。调查结果表明，在被操纵的评论空间中，反政府观点的曝光度与普通用户在被操纵的空间之外的更广泛的媒体生态系统中自发地遇到的整体政治基调不一致。随后，这种观点“气候”的不一致降低了在被操纵的空间中发表评论的可能性。