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).”

“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.”

“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).”

“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).”

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

“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).”

“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.”

“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).”

“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).”

“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.”

“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).”

“…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 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).”

“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).”

“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).”

“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).”

“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).”

“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).”

“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.”

“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).”