Skidmore Study Examines Fake News Stories on Social Media

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A team of researchers at Skidmore College is studying what factors might impact the believability of fake news stories posted to social media sites.

Participants in the study are both younger and older adults who are shown news story headlines posted to Facebook and similar sites. Some of the stories are true, others are false (as determined by the fact-checking website Snopes). The participants have a limited amount of time to determine whether or not they believe the headline to be true.

All of the stories used in the study are actual stories published online, but the social endorsement cue is manipulated by the Skidmore researchers. In this case, the social endorsement cue is the number of “likes” each story receives. The Skidmore research team is hoping to discover whether or not the number of likes impacts the believability of a story in the eyes of a participant. 

“If I’m evaluating whether or not a headline is true or false, the number of likes associated with it shouldn’t impact my decision at all, but we know from tons of research that those kinds of things can and do impact that,” said Daniel Peterson, a professor of Psychology at Skidmore College and the principal investigator of the project. “We’re looking at whether there are age differences associated with that.”

Peterson said that preliminary data seems to indicate that people struggle with determining whether a story is true or false. Most of the time they get it right, but “it’s not as strong as one might hope,” Peterson said. “Particularly in this political season, [fake news stories] have real consequences.”

Peterson said he and his researchers are measuring and controlling for education level, gender, self-identified race, and political affiliation. The team has just completed the data collection part of the study. Peterson hopes that the results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal by the spring of 2025.