--- title: '' output: bookdown::pdf_document2: default --- # Discussion and conclusion       Disinformation is a new name for an old problem. However, the advances of information technology have escalated the proliferation of disinformation online. By distorting individual and collective attitudes and behaviors, political disinformation may undermine democratic institutions. It is, therefore, of pressing importance for political scientists and communication researchers to understand the mechanisms that promote the proliferation of disinformation and fake news. While literature on susceptibility to misinformation is vast, my research has made contributions by furthering the understanding of factors that contribute to disinformation sharing behavior.       The major finding of this project is that partisan motivation shapes disinformation sharing behavior. Results from the ordinal logistic regression model provide robust support to the observation that partisans tend to share disinformation congenial to or favorable towards their political preferences in social media. My study shows that Democrats are more likely to share partisan disinformation favorable towards Democrats and to withhold partisan disinformation unfavorable towards Democrats (See Figure \@ref(fig:fig1)). Likewise, Republicans are also more likely to share partisan disinformation favorable towards Republicans and to withhold partisan disinformation unfavorable towards Republicans (See Figure \@ref(fig:fig2)). A motivated reasoning account in the literature of political psychology provides a theoretical framework to understand the cognitive mechanisms behind disinformation sharing behavior: Belief in fake news and disinformation is driven primarily by partisanship as individuals tend to rely on partisan cues to process information, and make political decisions and inferences [@schaffner2016misinformation; @clayton2019partisan]. Building on this account, political psychologists also argue that partisanship leads to motivated reasoning when individuals' group identity is threatened, for which partisans attend to and defend identity-congruent information while disregarding incongruent details [@kahan2016politically;@bolsen2014influence]. In my project, it is likely that partisans share disinformation favorable towards their political identification to protect their political identities. According to @van2018partisan, individuals who prioritize political identities above the truth often fail to discern truth from falsehoods, and they tend to believe ideologically concordant information. These accounts provide compelling theoretical support to my finding regarding partisan congeniality on (dis)information dissemination. Identifying and understanding the workings of political disinformation on social media platforms is crucial in guarding democracy against political disorder and ideological segregation.       From the perspective of the persuasion theory, sharing political disinformation is a behavior for polarized partisans to demonstrate their political attitudes and ideologies. The abundant literature on persuation and motivation clearly delineates the association between belief and behavior: Individuals are more likely to believe information that is concordant with their political affiliation [@farago2019we;@allcott2017social]. To conclude, partisans are intransigent to their political views. Prior research in political science and communication research has primarily focused on how disinformation is delivered, transmitted, processed, and received. Despite the seemingly prima facie “truth” that individuals may share disinformation on purpose, a dearth of empirical evidence has been gathered to lend weight to congruent conformity in partisan disinformation sharing. The results of this study not only show promising consistency with prior research on polarizing information acceptance and transmission, but also lend solid empirical support to the assumption that individuals’ information behaviors may be predicted by their political belief.       My study also finds that male and older individuals are more likely to share political disinformation. In accordance with popular belief, research results of this study suggest that age is a positive predictor of disinformation sharing behavior. According to the regression model, the older an individual is, the more likely the individual shares political disinformation. This finding lends empirical support to @guess2019less's research on fake news, in which they found that people aged 65 and older shared more fake news stories than younger age groups on Facebook during the 2016 presidential election. @loos2020consuming's study of generational differences on consuming fake news on Facebook provides an explanation as to why the older generation are more susceptible to falsehoods: Older people are more likely to be exposed to fake news websites as they usually lack the digital literacy skills to discern factual information from false information, as opposed to the younger groups.      In addition, gender difference also plays a crucial role in disinformation sharing behavior. As the regression model suggests, males are more likely than females to share disinformation on social media compared to women. Consistent with the literature on political participation, men appear to be more, on average, likely to express interest in politics than women [@coffe2010same;@schlozman1994gender]. It is potentially due to the fact that men usually assume more political leadership roles and are perceived to be more engaged in politics. For years, politics seems to be a "macho culture," in which men tend to hold primary power and predominance in political decision making. In this regard, given that men are usually more engaged in political activities and conversations, it is likely that men are more likely to spread political falsehoods than women. However, a competing account for the gender bias in disinformation dissemination is that women overall are simply less interested in political topics and information. A previous study by @almenar2021gender shows that men tend to consume political disinformation while women tend to receive fake news about celebrities. This may explain the gender difference in political disinformation dissemination.      As the statistical results of this study reveal, one’s educational level is negatively associated with his or her disinformation sharing behavior. Put differently, the less educated are more likely to share political disinformation than those better educated. This finding is in accordance with recent studies regarding susceptibility to disinformation [@khan2019recognise; @pop2019influence], in which scholars identify a negative association between educational attainment and disinformation acceptance. However, as mentioned earlier, my research focus is one’s individual disinformation sharing behavior rather than disinformation acceptance or denial. In other words, my study does not examine the reasoning behind disinformation sharing behavior. It therefore requires further examination of how individuals' acceptance of disinformation may or may not translate to actual sharing behavior. It is generally assumed that highly educated individuals are less susceptible to fake news and conspiracy theories, among other forms of disinformation. As the regression model suggests, this assumption holds true. One likely explanation for this result is that less educated individuals have limited time and cognitive resources to process and verify information, and hence, have to depend on psychological cues for political information consumption. Even for the most intelligent and educated individuals, disinformation can be facilely engineered to bypass logical thinking and slip under the radar of their minds. Recent studies show that educative interventions are an effective means to guard citizens against disinformation [@schaffner2018misinformation;@schaffner2018misinformation]. My results yield practical implications for combating disinformation and misinformation online. Individuals with higher educational attainment maybe more likely to be resistant to corrections, for which governments and policy makers should invest more educational resources in order to fight against deceptive and misleading information.       Social media engagement increases the likelihood of sharing disinformation, according to the regression model. My initial assumption and hypothesis was that social media engagement increases a certain level of social media literacy, which assists social media users in distinguishing true information from falsehoods. Although this study does not investigate the moderating effect of social media literacy on disinformation sharing behavior, the results do show that the more engaged an individual is in social media, the more likely the individual shares disinformation. This finding appears to be inconsistent with @munger2020political's finding where they discovered that social media use leads to higher levels of public knowledge, and hence, better abilities to discern factual information from disinformation. However, recognizing and sharing disinformation are two seperate topics that need to be further examined. It is possible that individuals may accidentally share more disinformation as they spend more time than others on social media platforms, or they share disinformation to bring attention to others. It is also a possibility that people are simply lazy to verify the accuracy of content they share online [@pennycook2019lazy].      In terms of information credibility, my research suggests that it is not a robust predictor of disinformation sharing behavior. To examine whether the information source’s credibility influences individuals’ intention to share disinformation, respondents were randomly assigned to groups where they received disinformation either with or without referencing a credible source. Those who received the disinformation in reference to credible sources, including reputable academic institutions and journals were expected to manifest a higher level of trust in the disinformation presented to them and were predicted to be more likely to share disinformation. The experimental results of my study, however, suggest otherwise. Regardless of whether the information sources were credible or authoritative or not, individuals did not tend to share partisan disinformation holding other variables fixed. A possible explanation is that research participants did not consider academic institutions and journals more reputable and reliable sources than other types of information sources. @ognyanova2020misinformation find that misinformation exposure is linked to lower trust in media organizations and political institutions. In my survey experiment, the credible sources were operationalized as renowned academic institutions and reputable academic journals. Given that academic sources are usually not as influential as political sources, which the news media frequently reference, respondents may have refrained from indicating their authentic sharing intent driven by political motivations. Moreover, the two types of information sources presented in my survey experiment were treated as equally. However, renowned academic institutions and reputable academic journals could potentially generate variation in survey responses given that the public maybe be familiar with renowned academic institutions, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but may have little knowledge or access to reputable academic journals. Thus, it is likely that misinformation exposure is also associated with trust in academic institutions, though this hypothesis needs to be further investigated in future research.      In addition to that, this finding has important practical implications for fact-checking as my research suggests that fact-checking may have limited effects on combating disinformation. Accordingly, the impact of source credibility on information assessment is minimal. Apropos debunking disinformation, this study sheds negative light on the efficacy of correction. Humans are biased information-seekers and prefer to receive and share information that confirms our existing views [@sunstein2016ethics]. Individuals may pertinaciously subscribe to their political doctrines that guide them through making political decisions. The implication of these findings is that fact checking may not be as useful as political scientists expect. As this study implies, people would still share disinformation despite the information was in reference to non-partisan and reputable sources. Political ideologies and identities seem to dictate individuals’ disinformation sharing behaviors. Disinformation debunking and fact checking may shape voters' political views to some extent, but can hardly change their voting decisions [@aird2018does]. Political scientists and policy makers have been considering tackling the disinformation finesse from the supply side by proposing a system to certify and label trustworthy content in order to put the kibosh on the rampant dissemination of falsehoods [@pennycook2019fighting;@walter2020fact;@porter2021global;@young2018fact]. However, my research raises concerns about the effectiveness and efficacy of fact-checking and fact-checking organizations. If individuals show less trust in media and academic institutions, they are possibly less likely to trust fact-checking organizations. Furthermore, my research indicates that supply-side analyses of disinformation need to be further visited in order to better understand if accuracy and authenticity reduce sharing of disinformation. To some extent, high demands for disinformation appear to be an important reason that disinformation is still burgeoning on social media platforms.       Political knowledge is an important predictor of disinformation sharing behavior. My research offers solid empirical evidence that conforms to the hypothesis that the political literacy or political knowledge is negatively correlated to disinformation sharing. With other variables holding constant, the more political knowledge an individual has, the less likely he or she shares political disinformation. My research results provide further empirical evidence to @vegetti2020impact's finding that individuals with higher levels of political sophistication perform better in truth discernment for political information regardless of partisan alignment. This implies that poor truth discernment may be linked to a lack of political reasoning and relevant knowledge of politics and current affairs. Political scientists have documented the deficiencies in political knowledge among American citizens, but the relationship between political knowledge and disinformation susceptibility received surprisingly scant attention. Political knowledge is the central concept in the studies of political attitudes and behaviors as it is considered to foster "enlightened self - interest" among the public [@carpini1996americans, p.238]. Higher levels of political knowledge are positively correlated to acceptance of democratic principles and values. The attenuation of political knowledge makes it challenging to form a politically engaged citizenry. My research shows that the attenuation of political knowledge acts as an obstacle to debunk disinformation and fake news. A possible explanation is that individuals with higher levels of political knowledge have sufficient and careful reasoning to evaluate the veracity of political information and news. Those who lack sufficient amount of political literacy may be more susceptible to disinformation in social media. When they encounter unfamiliar political information that requires certain levels of discernment and critical assessment, they instead use heuristics to process information as it effectively reduces cognitive load [@ali2021post;@chaiken2011theory;@todorov2002heuristic]. Even though this explanation requires further examination, individuals are naturally inclined to relying on cognitive shortcuts to make quick judgments when they have little or limited prior knowledge for processing new information. Granted, debunking disinformation is seemingly a futile effort drawing on the findings. It certainly does not imply that we should desert individuals at the mercy of falsehoods. On the other hand, this study suggests that political knowledge or political literacy is a vital intervention in combating political disinformation.