Hi, I'm doing research on credibility judgement of fake news items on social media. I hypothesize that the way people judge the credibility of news messages is moderated by the degree of which the message confirms prior beliefs. So people who agree what a message says will find the message more credible, regardless of whether the message is fake or not. I cant find a scale or way to measure this moderating variable. So how do i measure the degree in which people are biased against the information? Can anyone help me out? Thank you in advance.
Hello Stijn,
It's certainly an interesting question. I think you'd have to first identify the target topic(s) or issue(s) you'd want to use in the study. Then, for each, you would probably want to create your own scale of possible belief levels regarding that issue. As a simple example, consider these three statements as indicative of degrees of belief in climate change:
1. Climate change is a complete hoax, there is no science to support it.
2. Climate change is a completely natural and recurring phenomenon that poses little long-term threat to life.
3. Climate change is genuine, and will lead to the extinction of life on Earth if not addressed immediately, by all countries.
If an extended set of stimuli of this sort could be identified, and verified as forming a coherent scale, then this would be a suitable method for characterizing or quantifying the degree of prior belief for participants prior to exposing them to the news messages and asking them about how credible the messages are perceived to be.
Good luck with your work.
You might use a behavioral measure of the confirmation bias to create a moderating variable for your study of fake news. I created a confirmation bias laboratory activity you might build upon for your study (link below). Hope this helps, Stijn! ~ Kevin
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324150467_Confirmation_bias_and_the_2-4-6_game_How_do_we_test_our_perspectives
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