New research has taken a look at the factors that could make people more susceptible to misinformation from Russia. According to their findings, people who believe in conspiracy theories, distrust governments, and don’t follow politics tend to be vulnerable to false information and propaganda that involves anti-mainstream messaging from an “illiberal regime.”
Reported in the journal Comparative Political Studies, researchers ran a number of experiments on a diverse group of over 2,000 people in Germany. Participants were asked about their beliefs and attitudes before being given a short description of a real-world event. This included both domestic and foreign issues, such as Germany’s handling of the refugee crisis and Putin’s dubious financial arrangements.
After dividing the participants into five groups, some were also given additional information on the issue in question, representing anti-mainstream frames and mainstream frames. Some were then also told where the information came from, whether it was a Russian or “Western” source.
Crunching the data revealed that people with “strong beliefs in authoritarianism, conspiracy theorists, people with low political knowledge, and government opponents” were more likely to blindly accept anti-mainstream propaganda. This, they argue, highlights the type of people that appear to be more susceptible to Russian disinformation.
Concerningly, the research found that providing a pro-Western, mainstream viewpoint and outing the...
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