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FakeNews: Political news on Russia and its neighbors on social media: major content features, factors of trust and news truthfulness detection by users of different countries (2019-2021) (RSF)

Project leader: Olessia Koltsova

The project was carried out in 2019-2021 and consisted of two interrelated parts: FakeNewsProject and MediaCoverage. The project was supported by the grant of Russian Scientific Foundation No 19-18- 00206.

FakeNewsProject

This part of the project was performed in an informalt collaboration with international experts on the Kazakhstani and the Ukrainian media and on experimental data analysis. In particular, it involved Reinhold Kliegl (University of Potsdam, Germany) and Alex Miltsov (Bishop University, Canada).

Participants from SCILAAlexander PorshnevVictoria VzyatyshevaYadviga SinyavskayaSergey PashakhinKirill BryanovMaxim Terpilovsky

This project explored factors driving individuals’ perceptions of online news’ credibility, as well as their ability to discriminate between real and false news. The central factor of credibility judgements that was examined was the news item’s consistency with either a dominant way of framing news in the respondent’s national media system (dominant frame), or with an alternative frame. The hypotheses were tested in the context of foreign affairs news produced by media organizations in Russia and two of its neighboring nations, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Other tested factors t were individuals’ support of their government and the country of the news source. Additionally, the research explored the effects of individuals’ cognitive styles and the structure of their friendship networks on their ability to differentiate between real and fake news.

The hypotheses were tested in a series of online experiments carried out in the spring of 2020. They produced a sample of 10830 Facebook and VK social media users from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Respondents were asked to take a quiz where they rated the credibility of both fake and true news about one of the neighboring countries, that varied by frame and other parameters. In the post-test, users answered a series of questions, and consenting VK users were additionally asked to grant access to some of their account data.

It was found that users on average rated news items representing a dominant frame as more credible than those with an alternative frame. The presence of international conflict amplified the effect of frame, increasing the credibility of dominant-frame news compared to alternatively framed news. In Russia and Kazakhstan, those supporting the government the most perceived dominantly framed news as more credible than alternatively framed news, while for the least supportive of their governments there was no frame effect. Tendency for conspiracy thinking was associated with lower accuracy of fake news recognition and higher overall news credibility. Analysis of VK users’ subsample revealed that users who had people from the country covered in the news on their friend lists were more accurate in recognizing fakes while reporting lower credibility of dominant-frame news.

MediaCoverage

Participants: Sergey Pashakhin, Maxim Terpilovsky, Anastasia Kazun, Sergei Koltsov, Darja Judina, Alina Kolycheva

The goal of the project was to establish how the media of three countries – Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia – covered the politics of each other at the time of the research, what the main topics and frames ere, which frames dominated and which played the role of alternatives. A specific goal was to compare mutual representation of the countries in conflict with the mutual representations of the countries that were not in conflict. The frames discovered in this project were later used in creating stimulus material for the FakeNewsProject online experiments.

We collected three large corpora of media texts produced by thirty most viewed online media outlets in each of the three studied countries. Using a combination of topic modelling and qualitative analysis and relying on the input from the media experts specializing on the focal countries, we identified sets of topics that dominated the news agenda in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan regarding each of the target neighboring nations. Coherent discursive patterns were then identified that were representative of either dominant or alternative ways of framing each country.

It was found that in the Russia-Ukraine pair dominant frames were hostile and revolved around topics related to the fundamental controversies underlying the conflict between the two nations, most notably Russia’s takeover of Crimea. The tone of coverage between Russia and Kazakhstan was much more reserved, with images of cooperation dominating the news, although the notion of Kazakhstan’s distancing from Russia could sometimes be observed in Kazakhstani news.

Project materials

Publications

  1.  Bryanov K., Kliegl R., Koltsova O., Lokot T., Miltsov A., Pashakhin S., Porshnev A., Sinyavskaya Y., Maxim Terpilovskii, Vziatysheva V. What Drives Perceptions of Foreign News Coverage Credibility? A Cross-National Experiment Including Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine // Political Communication. 2023. Vol. 40. No. 2. P. 115-146. doiDownload (PDF, 10.32 Мб)
  2. Prytkova A., Pashakhin S., Koltsov S. Following the Lead When Nothing is Certain? Exploring the Image of Russia in Kazakhstani and Ukrainian Digital News Media, in: Digital Transformation and Global Society. 6th International Conference, DTGS 2021, St. Petersburg, Russia, June 23–25, 2021, Revised Selected Papers / Ed. by D. A. Alexandrov, A. V. Boukhanovsky, A. V. Chugunov, Y. Kabanov, O. Koltsova, I. Musabirov, S. Pashakhin. Cham: Springer, 2022. P. 375-388.
  3. Кольцова О.Ю., Юдина Д.И., Пашахин С.В., Колычева А.В. (2022). Освещение выборов в Казахстане и Украине российскими СМИ. Полис (in print)
  4.  Porshnev, A., Miltsov, A., Lokot, T., & Koltsova, O. (2021, July). Effects of conspiracy thinking style, framing and political interest on accuracy of fake news recognition by social media users: evidence from Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 341-357). Springer, Cham.
  5.  Vziatysheva, V., Sinyavskaya, Y., Porshnev, A., Terpilovskii, M., Koltcov, S., & Bryanov, K. (2021, July). Testing users’ ability to recognize fake news in three countries. An experimental perspective. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 370-390). Springer, Cham.
  6. Bryanov, K., & Vziatysheva, V. (2021). Determinants of individuals’ belief in fake news: A scoping review determinants of belief in fake news. PLoS one, 16(6), e0253717.
  7. Koltsova, O., Sinyavskaya, Y., & Terpilovskii, M. (2020, July). Designing an Experiment on Recognition of Political Fake News by Social Media Users: Factors of Dropout. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 261-277). Springer, Cham.
  8. Казун, А. Д., & Пашахин, С. В. (2021). «Чужие выборы»: новости соседнего государства о выборах президента РФ в 2018 г. Экономическая социология, 22(1).
  9. Казун А.Д. (2020) Так ли страшен фейк? Ложные новости и их роль в современном мире. Мониторинг общественного мнения, 4(158), 162-175.
  10. Porshnev, A., & Miltsov, A. (2020, July). The effects of thinking styles and news domain on fake news recognition by social media users: Evidence from Russia. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 305-320). Springer, Cham.

 

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