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Fake news, a thread. According to new work from the University of Canberra in cooperation with the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford, a majority of online consumers in Australia, 62%, are concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet.
This level of local concern is higher than the global average and, the more interested in politics you are, the more you worry about fake news. The new research suggests a proportion of news consumers in Australia are taking steps to try and verify what they are reading.
But before we get too excited, most people consuming information online in Australia take no steps to verify its accuracy. Australians are also more likely to share a dubious story without checking it than news consumers in many of the other countries surveyed.
People currently fact checking have higher levels of education, income and engagement with politics. People least likely to fact check least are news consumers who don’t know their political orientation – the undecided voters who determine the outcomes of federal elections.
The non-fact checkers are more likely to be female, younger & have low education and incomes. “They are possibly making voting decisions based on the fewest number of sources and are less likely to check them. This reflects a significant population of disengaged news consumers.”
Some analysis about this here: theguardian.com/media/2019/jun… #auspol
