Mistrust, Disinforming News, and Vote Choice: A Panel Survey on the Origins and Consequences of Believing Disinformation in the 2017 German Parliamentary Election

“Discriminant validity concerning the different factors was also tested and confirmed based on the Fornell-Larcker criterion (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).”

“In general, the importance of institutional trust is rooted in the differentiation of expert systems in modern society (Giddens, 1990), for example science or law.”

“Interestingly, there is evidence that individuals are more likely to engage in the latter (Kunda, 1990).”

“And third, they could exit the party system entirely through abstention from the vote (Hirschman, 1970; Hooghe, Marien, & Pauwels, 2011).”

“These placebo news items were meant to control for a possible inflation of the disnews scores in the upcoming analysis (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017, p. 220).”

“…from other forms of disinformation (e.g., conspiracy theories) by its distinct news character: By applying news values such as unexpectedness and negativity as well as news formats, disnews purports to hold journalistic credibility (Lazer et al., 2018; Levy, 2017; Tandoc, Lim,&Ling, 2018a, p. 143).”

“In order to benefit from the panel design of our study, we conceptualized it as a so-called autoregressive model with cross-lagged effects (Cole & Maxwell, 2003; Finkel, 1995; Jöreskog, 1979).”

“In general, trust in politics refers to “the probability … that the political system (or some part of it) will produce preferred outcomes even if left untended” (Gamson, 1968, p. 54; Easton, 1975, p. 447).”

“Thus, to trust means that an actor delegates responsibility for a certain action to another actor, though they know that this actor potentially could not meet their expectation (Barber, 1983; Simmel, 2004, pp. 173–181).”

“In a similar vein, Lewandowsky, Ecker, and Cook (2017) suggest disinformation should be embedded into a broader societal context, which they refer to as a post-truth world.”

“Nevertheless, this aggregation clouds the fact that exposure to disinformation is extremely concentrated and attributable to specific parts of the population, such as elderly and conservative people (Grinberg et al., 2019; Guess, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2018).”

“Especially in the online context, media literacy facilitates authentication of true and rejection of false news (Tandoc et al., 2018b).”

“People evaluate (political) statements in the light of their predispositions so that factual beliefs align with their (political) stances (Bartels, 2002).”

“The originators of disinformation take advantage of this development by creating “alternative information systems that block the mainstream press and provide followers with emotionally satisfying beliefs around which they can organize” (Bennett & Livingston, 2018, p. 132).”

“We inspected factorial measurement invariance (see Widaman & Reise, 1997) by comparing the model to a restricted version through chi-square difference testing and assumed configural, weak (equal loadings), partial strong (equal intercepts), and strict (equal residual variances) invariance over time…”

“Thus, to trust means that an actor delegates responsibility for a certain action to another actor, though they know that this actor potentially could not meet their expectation (Barber, 1983; Simmel, 2004, pp. 173–181).”

“Online media especially seems to be the perfect venue for those mistrustful publics in search of alternative information about the political system (Tsfati, 2010; Marwick & Lewis, 2017, pp. 40–41).”

“In general, trust in politics refers to “the probability … that the political system (or some part of it) will produce preferred outcomes even if left untended” (Gamson, 1968, p. 54; Easton, 1975, p. 447).”

“In order to benefit from the panel design of our study, we conceptualized it as a so-called autoregressive model with cross-lagged effects (Cole & Maxwell, 2003; Finkel, 1995; Jöreskog, 1979).”

“They might even expect the government and the mainstream parties to worsen the problems that society is facing (Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Cook & Gronke, 2005).”

“The term “fake news” has been repeatedly misused by politicians such as Donald Trump as a label to discredit traditional news media (Egelhofer & Lecheler, 2019), which impairs its scientific value.”

“Likewise, findings by Kahne and Bowyer (2017) indicate that media literacy helps to assess the veracity of simulated online posts.”

“Therefore, we prefer the term disinforming news (or disnews) to explicitly indicate it to be a specific “species of disinformation” (Gelfert, 2018, p. 103; see alsoMarwick& Lewis, 2017, p. 44; Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017, p. 20).”

“Trust in news media refers to the expectation that the news media supplies its publics with specific information, which serves to orientate users in a complex and otherwise unmanageable society (Kohring & Matthes, 2007).”

“They might even expect the government and the mainstream parties to worsen the problems that society is facing (Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Cook & Gronke, 2005).”

“For example, people tend to believe conspiracy theories that correspond to their political attitudes (Swami, 2012; Uscinski, Klofstad, & Atkinson, 2016).”

“It is deemed to serve as an indispensable resource for the political system (Easton, 1975, pp. 447–448; Hetherington, 2005).”

“…framing with regard to immigrants (e.g., as criminal foreigners) prompts negative attitudes toward immigration and its consequences and raises the salience of immigration as a problem, which is not appropriately addressed by the political system (Barrera et al., 2018; Igartua & Cheng, 2009).”

“Online media especially seems to be the perfect venue for those mistrustful publics in search of alternative information about the political system (Tsfati, 2010; Marwick & Lewis, 2017, pp. 40–41).”

“In general, this term connotes that previously familiar mechanisms of knowledge production with certain responsible actors and institutions (e.g., science, politics, and legacy media) on the one hand, and corresponding publics on the other, are fundamentally challenged (Gibson, 2018; Harsin, 2015).”

“Additionally, people believing false rumors about particular candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential election were less likely to vote for those candidates (Weeks & Garrett, 2014).”

“…framing with regard to immigrants (e.g., as criminal foreigners) prompts negative attitudes toward immigration and its consequences and raises the salience of immigration as a problem, which is not appropriately addressed by the political system (Barrera et al., 2018; Igartua & Cheng, 2009).”

“In line with this, Craft, Ashley, and Maksl (2017) demonstrate that greater knowledge about news media leads to fewer endorsements of conspiracy theories, even when these match political views.”

“The need for orientation has thus been shown to be an important driver of people’s media use for political information, and corresponding media effects (Matthes, 2005; Weaver, 1980).”

“The need for orientation has thus been shown to be an important driver of people’s media use for political information, and corresponding media effects (Matthes, 2005; Weaver, 1980).”

“This implies that people ascribe more substance to assertions that they have heard, read, or seen repeatedly, and has been repeatedly proven in cognitive psychology as well as in political communication (Dechêne, Stahl, Hansen, & Wänke, 2010; Ernst, Kühne, & Wirth, 2017; Koch & Zerback, 2013).”

“In constrast, mistrust toward mainstream media prompts a switch to nonmainstream or alternative media (Tsfati & Peri, 2006).”

“To account for a potential truth effect of disnews spread online, we questioned our respondents about their “social media news use,” employing a 5-point scale (1 = “never,” 5 = “very often”) by Choi (2016), comprising three items.”

“In fact, studies show that distorted beliefs about a political issue can influence people’s vote on a ballot question concerning that issue even when controlling for preexisting views and political sophistication (Reedy et al., 2014; Wells, Reedy, Gastil, & Lee, 2009).”

“Studies have also found associations between political conservatism and belief in misinformation in the USA [20,44], Chile [121], and Germany [122], but not in Hungary [24], and users who engage in less reasoning have been found to share content from lower-quality news sites on Twitter [71].”

“Longitudinal studies could give even more insights into how a decline of confidence in senses and institutions develops over time (e.g. Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“This worsens debates over public policy (Kuklinski et al., 2000) and hampers citizens’ ability to choose elected officials (Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“As such, fake news is likely to be used in the course of political campaigns and can influence voting decisions [12] (please also see works on politically oriented news and polarization [13,14]).”

“Accordingly, individuals with lower trust in traditional news media have been found to be more inclined to believe misinformation (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020) and to abandon journalistic information (Lazer et al., 2018).”

“…a more conscious usage of the term in science as well as in journalism and who have proposed a return to the use of more meaningful notions, such as “disinformation” or simply “false news” (e.g., Egelhofer and Lecheler 2019; HLEG 2018; Wardle and Derakhshan 2017; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“For instance, they could divert our attention and resources from the real causes of the current information disorder (Wardle and Derakhshan, 2017), such as lack of trust in institutions and high partisan animosity (Osmundsen et al., 2021; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“More broadly, low trust in news and institutions is strongly associated with holding misconceptions and false beliefs (Roozenbeek et al. 2020; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“There is also some evidence that belief in fabricated news is linked with voting for right-wing populist parties (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Some studies show limited or no direct impact from misinformation, whilst others indicate significant impacts on political behavior (e.g., Bail et al., 2020; Gunther et al., 2019; Zimmerman & Kohring, 2020).”

“Similarly, German disinformation is found to contain mostly right-wing implications “ such as skepticism toward the European Union ( … ) and above all the exclusion of migrants and refugees ” (Zimmermann and Kohring 2020, 221).”

“For example, Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) showed that low trust in news media increases belief in disinformation.”

“…suggest that the causal mechanism underlying this association is that the populists’ Manichean understanding of politics attracts voters who are particularly disenchanted with democracy and dis-trustful of mainstream institutions, especially mainstream media (Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“Heliyon 7 (2021) e06503 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Heliyon journal homepage: www.cell.com/heliyon Research article The evaluation of fake and true news: on the role of intelligence, personality, interpersonal trust, ideological attitudes, and news consumption Cornelia Sindermann a,*, Helena Sophia Schmi…”

“In a study on German voters, Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) found that media consumers with low trust in institutions and mainstream media tend to turn to alternative and nonreliable sources of information (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020, p. 227, 231).”

“Research evaluating the utility of online fact checking suggests that even under less uncertain conditions, it remains an uneven but relatively effective counterstrategy to disinformation [22-26].”

“This parallels other recent evidence that people low on media trust are more susceptible to disinformation (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Other studies (such as Zimmermann and Kohring 2020; Hopp et al. 2020; Grinberg et al. 2019) collected data through user engagement on social media.”

“Such distrust can make people more susceptible to fake news (Frischlich and Humprecht 2021; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“Building on, but also departing from, existing research (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Rossini et al., 2021; Valenzuela et al., 2019; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020), we found that citizens’ exposure to campaign coverage by professional news organizations was associated with their greater ability to…”

“Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) observed that in Germany, political trust decreases the likelihood of believing in disinformation, but disinformation does not affect political trust.”

“Emerging experimental evidence indicates some audience effects (Bauer & von Hohenberg, 2020; Min & Luqiu, 2021; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“As distrust of media outlets and politics prevails in Colombia, finding certain evidence that associates less trust in the news and politics with a higher probability of believing in online disinformation was initiated (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“One feld with enormous potential to be abused is politics, where face swaps are feared to increase mistrust in politicians and parties, which may drive voters towards more radical groups [18, 63, 73].”

“In recent years, the scale spread and capillarity of fake news have been favouring the agenda and politicians of the radical right (Marwick and Lewis 2017; Pyrhönen and Bauvois 2020; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“Pundits and scholars argue we have entered a “post-truth” era, surrounded by dishonest politicians and “fake news” that stymie public health efforts, provoke violence, and undermine democracy [1-7].”

“…factors that are found to strongly influence the rating of true and false information and the effects of mis-and disinformation more generally (e.g. Zimmermann and Kohring 2020): Media trust, measured with five items asking about whether media are fair in their covering unbiased, tell the whole…”

“Only one of these four studies employs a longitudinal research design (Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020), focusing on the 2017 German election campaign, when – according to the authors of this study – disinformation in online media presented a specific ideological orientation, given its negative framing regarding immigran…”

“All of this means that, as social media become engines of campaign communication, elections in many nations are increasingly burdened with problems of disinformation and voter mistrust that often benefit rightwing or illiberal parties (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Furthermore, our findings on different online information search patterns revealed incomplete coping processes as a reason for persistent attitudinal changes and thus support demands for encouraging media competencies to counteract disinformation impacts (Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020a).”

“Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) bridge the gap between distrust in news and belief in disinformation.”

“Some studies found consequential effects of fake news on citizens’ political behavior (Gunther et al., 2019; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020) whereas others demonstrated that exposure to fake news is much less than assumed and so is its real-world impact (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Grinberg et al., 2019;…”

“In the context of news consumption and misinformation, trust plays a vital role (see e.g., Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) demonstrate that reduced levels of trust in the news media correlate with a heightened belief in disinformation in Germany.”

“The findings also converge on the negative impact of digital media on institutional and political trust (Pietsch and Martin 2011; Im et al. 2014; Sabatini and Sarracino 2019; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“See Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) who argue that fake news, spread online prior to the German election, resulted in higher vote shares for the AfD.”

“Moreover, our findings offer some support for the role of individual-level differences in susceptibility to disinformation (e.g., Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“Whereas, empirical research has found evidence for the existence of this nexus (Ariely 2015; Knudsen et al. 2021), there has been rather limited attention to the ways low trust in news media might affect citizens’ choices regarding their political participation (Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“As citizens with more pronounced levels of distrust are more likely to accept misinformation (e.g., Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020) and in line with findings that citizens with populist attitudes are more likely to distrust established informa‐ tion (e.g., Schulz et al., 2020), we expect that…”

“Since many people, particularly youth [3], consume their main news information from social media platforms, the influence of disinformation has become a real threat around the world and should be investigated [16-19].”

“…alternative media, which demonstrates that individuals with low levels of trust in institutions and mainstream media are overrepresented among consumers of alternative or unreliable sources of information (Noppari et al. 2019; Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou 2020; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“While “fake news” often suggests a strong political motivation (Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020), health communication (Van der Meer & Jin, 2020) and science communication (Taddicken & Wolff, 2020) are not immune from fake news attacks.”

“Studies show that belief in disinformation can impact voting behavior by diminishing support for the governing party and swaying opinions toward right-wing populism (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Unfortunately for democracy, being exposed to disinformation also has an impact on voting choices at least in some cases (Cantarella, Fraccaroli, and Volpe 2023; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“…poses societal risks, including the potential to undermine democratic electoral processes (McKay and Tenove, 2021), fuel far-right support (Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020), intensify political polarisation (Vasist et al., 2024), and erode public trust in the media (Suiter and Fletcher,…”

“…repeatedly demonstrated that people with populist attitudes are more likely to believe misinformation (Hameleers, 2022) or hold conspiracy beliefs (Castanho Silva et al., 2017); similar associations were found among populist right-wing voters (Van Kessel et al., 2020; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Longitudinal studies have shown that the less citizens trust the news media, the more they believe in (online) disinformation (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“We decided to use a fictitious post on Facebook because misinformation is often spread via social media sites The prevalence of misinformation has increased as the growth of social media has made it easier for people to spread false information (Vosoughi et al., 2018; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Although most research has pointed to indirect effects of disinformation exposure (e.g., Schaewitz et al., 2020; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020) and a stronger dif‐ ference in perceived credibility across authentic infor‐ mation and disinformation (Hameleers et al., 2020), we found that right‐wing…”

“Other studies have been looking at the consequences of pseudo-information for political opinions and behaviors, generally finding small effects, and concentrated in the short term (Flynn et al., 2017; Garrett, 2019; Weeks & Garrett, 2014; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“To further understand the effect of immersive viewing experiences, additional experiments focusing on a broader range of stimuli including comparisons between regular and 360 ◦ videos would be beneficial.”

“In addition, Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) show that lower levels of media trust correspond with susceptibility to online disinformation.”

“Democracies across the Global South and Global North alike have witnessed how misinfor-mation exploits social divisions and erodes trust in electoral processes (Baptista & Gradim, 2022; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“…priming theory, political cynicism promotes belief in misinformation that aligns with their existing political stands and feelings characterized by distrust, criticism, and dissatisfaction towards public institutions, politicians, and political processes (Zahidi, 2024; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Trust is key to the functioning of democracy (Inglehart, 1988; Putnam, 1993) but can be undermined through the strategic spread of disinformation (Ross et al. 2022; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“The less one trusts news media and politics, the more one believes in online disinformation (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“…correct, factual, or unbiased information, or based on a feeling of vulnerability, anger, resentment, or that the media is untrustworthy (Andersen et al., 2023; Ihlebæk & Holter, 2021; Jakobsson & Stiernstedt, 2024; Suiter & Fletcher, 2020; Yamamoto et al., 2022; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”