Journalism Students and Information Consumption in the Era of Fake News

Abstract

Technological platforms, such as social media, are disrupting traditional journalism, as a result the access to high-quality information by citizens is facing important challenges, among which, disinformation and the spread of fake news are the most relevant one. This study approaches how journalism students perceive and assess this phenomenon. The descriptive and exploratory research is based on a hybrid methodology: Two matrix surveys of students and a focus group of professors (n = 6), experts in Multimedia Journalism. The first survey (n = 252), focused on students’ perception of fake news, the second (n = 300) aims at finding out the type of content they had received during the recent confinement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Results show that most of the students prefer online media as a primary source of information instead of social media. Students consider that politics is the main topic of fake news, which, according to the respondents, are mainly distributed by adult users through social networks. The vast majority believe that fake news are created for political interests and a quarter of the sample considers that there is a strong ideological component behind disinformation strategies. Nonetheless, the study also reveals that students do not trust in their ability to distinguish between truthful and false information. For this reason, this research concludes, among other aspects, that the promotion of initiatives and research to promote media literacy and news literacy are decisive in the training of university students.

Las fake news y su percepción por parte de los jóvenes españoles: el influjo de los factores sociodemográficos

“…Las fake news y su percepción por parte de los jóvenes españoles: el influjo de los factores sociodemográficos ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978 guren et al, 2020). Y por lo que respecta a las temáticas más frecuentes de las fake news recibidas, la política monopoliza buena parte de estos contenidos, aunque se alterna con informaciones paródicas y supuestas noticias relacionadas con sucesos, cultura y sanidad Tejedor et al, 2021) 1 .…”

“…Algunos trabajos indagan en los motivos que llevan a los jóvenes a detectar las fake news; entre ellos figuran la alarma social que generan, el atractivo de sus titulares, lo sorprendente del contenido, el medio del que proceden o, con frecuencia, la falta de lógica de lo narrado (De Vicente et al, 2021;Tejedor et al, 2021).…”

Examining the motivations of sharing political deepfake videos: the role of political brand hate and moral consciousness

“…The primary motivations for fake news creation are ideological (Tandoc et al, 2018) or economical (Bakir and McStay, 2018;Hughes and Waismel-Manor, 2021). Ideologically, fake news creation aims to extend one's ideological or political motives by disrupting public discourse (Petersen et al, 2018;Tandoc et al, 2019;Tejedor et al, 2021).…”

Fake news on the internet: a literature review, synthesis and directions for future research

“…Ideologically, some FNI providers intentionally muddy the waters of public discourse or discredit particular personalities to push for the political or ideological agenda they support (Tandoc et al. , 2019; Tejedor et al. , 2021).…”