Where’s the fake news at? European news consumers’ perceptions of misinformation across information sources and topics

Abstract

This study indicates that news users across ten different European countries are quite concerned about misinformation in their information environment. Respondents are most likely to associate politicians, corporations, and foreign actors with misinformation. They perceive misinformation to be most common for topics like immigration, the economy, and the environment. This offers support for the increasingly more relative and politicized status of facts in people’s credibility perceptions. Yet, differences across sources and issues are relatively modest, indicating that misinformation can be associated with many different information sources and topics.

Keywords

• fake news
• mainstream media
• media literacy