Just feeling exposed to ‘fake news’ makes voters cynical

Even for voters savvy enough to separate good information from bad, just feeling exposed to misinformation is enough to make them cynical about politics come Election Day, a new study shows.

In the days and weeks leading up to an election, sources bombard voters with information—in the form of news stories, social media posts, phone calls, text messages, and more. And in the age of “fake news,” not all of that information is reliable.

A new paper in New Media and Society explores how perceived exposure to false information—also termed misinformation or disinformation—affects political cynicism.

The researchers, assistant professor Dam Hee Kim, and professor Kate Kenski, both in the communications department at the University of Arizona, based ther findings on survey data from the 2018 US midterm elections.

Their work shows that the more people believe they are exposed to disinformation in the two weeks prior to an election, the more cynical they feel about politics when it’s time to vote.

Here, Kim and Kenski discuss why that matters and what it could mean in next week’s election:

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