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).”

“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).”

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

“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).”

“Yet most seem to only focus on the impact of misinformation 2 on vote choice (Cantarella et al., 2020; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“As these citizens are also least resilient to disinforma-tion (e.g., Humprecht et al., 2020; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020), interventions may aim to instill more resilience among distrusting audience segments.”

“Political misinformation is also caustic because it can potentially influence voters (Gunther et al., 2019; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020; although see Leyva & Beckett, 2020), under-mining their ability to make well-informed and evidence-based decisions.”

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

“Of concern, a recent study by Fabian, Zimmermann and Kohring (2019) find that as trust in politics decreases, individuals become more likely to believe in online political disinformation.”

“The result is, according to Zimmermann and Kohring (2020), a disinformation order that forms in opposition to the established information system to disrupt democracy.”

“…they also function as conduits, facilitating the accelerated dissemination of misinformation, particularly in the wake of significant global events such as the US Presidential election, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war (Altay et al., 2022; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“In line with this, extant research found that distrusting citizens are most likely to accept political disinformation narratives (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Equally relevant, other works also report the effects of misinformation on the political and media systems of different countries (Vaccari and Chadwick, 2020; Duyn and Collier, 2019; Vargo et al ., 2018; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“2019, Wilson and Wiysonge 2020, Zimmermann and Kohring 2020, Lewandowsky 2021).”

“According to the findings of Zimmermann and Kohring (2020), those who exhibit lower levels of trust in news media are more susceptible to being influenced by disinformation, thereby impacting their voting choices.”

“…the spread of misinformation has become a major threat to democratic societies: It can prevent fact-based debates, lead to public opinions being manipulated, and foster polarization and conflict among political groups (e.g., Cook et al., 2017; Loomba et al., 2021; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Conversely, citizens with low trust in mainstream media are more likely to believe in electoral disinformation (Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“While distrust in media may foster an initial critical attitude, it may also drive individuals to seek alternative sources that are not necessarily reliable, thereby increasing their vulnerability to misinformation (Swart & Broersma, 2022; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“We study this relationship through the mediating mechanisms of trust in democracy and trust in media—two concepts that are inherently part of HMP (Tsfati & Cohen, 2005, 2012), as well as disinformation processing (Hameleers, Brosius, & De Vreese, 2022; Humprecht, 2023; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“…heard by more than half of the respondents, and with even the least heard narrative reaching a third of the survey population, Serbian data place it ahead of other countries such as Spain, U.S., Germany (Suau and Puertas-Graell, 2023; Silverman & Singer-Vine 2016; Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).”

“Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020, states that Fake News is unwanted because it impacts and influence people psychologically and socially as it distorts and skew their belief which results in getting drowned into misinformation and wrong decisions.”

“Concerning individual differences, previous research found that differences in personal traits may affect news belief, such as personality [8–12], thinking style [4,13–15], media literacy [16–18], and prior attitudes [19–22].”

“(3) People’s beliefs: Zimmermann and Kohring indicated that the less people trusted news media and politics, the more they trusted online disinformation [29].”

“The standard error of each coefficient is estimated using bootstrap method with 1000 replications [2], [7].”

“Through false stories targeting competitors (e.g., Tenove, 2020; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020; Pirro and Taggart, 2022), anti-pluralists attempt to boost their own popularity or avoid blame in government (e.g., Pirro and Taggart, 2022).”

“The erosion of trust in institutions is associated with protest voting, support of extreme right-wing and populist parties (Hooghe et al., 2011), believing disin-formation (Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020) and even tolerance for unlawful behavior (Marien and Hooghe, 2011).”

“Existing research has investigated similar connections in countries across Europe (Chadwick et al., 2018; Chadwick et al., 2021; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“This is concerning because it can result in a less-informed electorate that is more susceptible to believing false information (Damstra et al., 2023; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020) and less likely to participate politically (Valeriani & Vaccari, 2016).”

“At the same time, the broader cultural context within which young individuals are embedded exerts a significant influence on how information is interpreted, assessed, and integrated into their cognitive frameworks [17, 18, 19].”

“Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) have suggested that disinformation may be aimed more at economic profit than persuasion.”

“Moreover, Germany was expected to be one of the prime targets of Russian information manipulation according to political observers (Trellevik and Cie ś la, 2024).”

“To account for this response bias, belief in true statements has been used as a control measure (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020).”

“Third, intentionally deceptive content often covers issues that mirror the agenda of the conservative and far-right community, such as crime and immigration (Pierri et al., 2020; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020).”

“…diverse statements that contradicted the best available evidence at the time, circulated on social media, and were addressed by fact-checkers (Zimmermann and Kohring 2020): “The Medical university of Vienna has concluded that the pain medication ibuprofen exacerbates symptoms caused by the…”

“A semi-structured interview outline was prepared based on the studies in the literature 5,6,7,8 , and 10 experts in network information management, 4 practitioners in network information management, and 6 graduate students in Library and Information Science were invited to discuss the influence…”

“In addition to that, Zimmermann and Kohring (2020) show that those who trust the media less are also more likely to believe online disinformation.”