To (be)lieve, or not to (be)lieve? Fake news, culture, and decision-making in a post-truth age.

Abstract

Technology has enabled information—including fake news—to spread globally, reaching wider and farther than ever before. This PhD research addresses an important gap: the understudied relationship between culture, fake news, and decision-making, through six distinct studies. Study 1 was exploratory in nature. It developed relevant survey questions and created five fabricated news stories designed as social media posts for use in subsequent experiments. Study 2 employed a survey incorporating three of these fabricated stories to investigate how credibility characteristics varied across social media platforms such as X, Instagram, and Facebook. Results indicated that participants used different credibility cues depending on the platform on which the news appeared. Study 3 examined participants’ eye movements, dwell time (the duration of gaze), using online eye-tracking to determine if participants’ country backgrounds influenced how long they focused on certain visual areas of five fake news stories in social media formats. Findings showed that country background did not significantly affect dwell time. Study 4 analysed another eye-tracking measure—the time taken to first fixate gaze on a visual area—using the same data set. Results found no significant impact of country background on initial gaze fixation but suggested that deeper cognitive processes may have influenced participants’ real/fake news judgments. Study 5 consisted of six semi-structured interviews with experts in cybersecurity and/or psychology, revealing common narratives around culture in real-world contexts of deceptive information. Finally, Study 6 involved eight semi-structured focus groups with participants living in the United Kingdom and the United States to explore audience perceptions and cross-cultural differences in understanding why fake news spreads. Results highlighted that the most apparent cross-cultural differences emerged around proposed solutions to fake news. Overall, the relationship between culture, decision-making, and fake news is complex and warrants further investigation to effectively address the societal harms caused by misinformation.