About 80 percent of false or misleading information that voters encountered during the recent Lower House election campaign was mistakenly believed to be true, according to an online survey.

Morihiro Ogasahara, a sociology professor at Toyo University, who conducted the survey, said fact-checking may have failed to keep pace due to the short 16-day campaign period from dissolution to voting, allowing false claims to take root in viewers’ minds as if they were accurate.

“In an environment where large volumes of information of an uncertain veracity circulate, it is difficult for individuals to determine what is true,” he said. “It is important to have trusted sources of information, such as certain media outlets, that they regularly consult.”

The survey was conducted between Feb. 8, the voting day, and Feb. 10, covering about 1,800 people aged 18 or older.

Respondents were asked if they had seen or heard any of the five pieces of false or misleading information selected by Ogasahara during the official campaign period from Jan. 27 to Feb. 7.

Examples included: “A video of the crowd at a street rally of the Centrist Reform Alliance was generated by artificial intelligence” and “A photo of the crowd at Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s street speech was from footage of the Shibuya New Year’s Eve countdown in 2025.”

According to the survey results, 51.4 percent of all respondents, or 921 people, had been exposed to at least one instance of false or misleading information.

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