misinformation

This is a list of my publications on this topic.

The Electoral Misinformation Nexus: How News Consumption, Platform Use, and Trust in News Influence Belief in Electoral Misinformation

Electoral misinformation, where citizens believe false or misleading claims about the electoral process and electoral institutions—sometimes actively and strategically spread by political actors—is a challenge to public confidence in elections …

Trust Is Key: Determinants of False Beliefs about Climate Change in Eight Countries

Science has established the human-caused nature of climate change, yet the prevalence of climate-related misinformation persists, undermining public understanding and impeding collective action. Strikingly, existing research on belief in …

News Can Help! The Impact of News Media and Digital Platforms on Awareness of and Belief in Misinformation

Does the news media exacerbate or reduce misinformation problems? Although some news media deliberately try to counter misinformation, it has been suggested that they might also inadvertently, and sometimes purposefully, amplify it. We conducted a …

Mapping the Website and Mobile Audiences of Russia's Foreign Communication Outlets, RT and Sputnik, Across 21 Countries

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, policymakers worldwide have taken measures to curb the reach of Russia’s foreign communication outlets, RT and Sputnik. Mapping the audiences of these outlets in 21 countries, we show that in the quarter before …

Quantifying the "Infodemic": People Turned to Trustworthy News Outlets During the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic

How did the 2020 coronavirus pandemic affect people's online news consumption? To understand this, we present a comparative analysis of data on an estimated 905B desktop and mobile visits to news outlets, and 54B Facebook engagements, generated by …

How News Audiences Think About Misinformation Across the World

In this chapter, Richard Fletcher examines some of the key findings from the 2018 Reuters Institute Digital News Report. This report analysed online data dealing with news consumption from approximately 74,000 respondents internationally, with …

Communications in the Coronavirus Crisis: Lessons for the Second Wave

The coronavirus pandemic is a communications crisis in addition to being a public health emergency. In this report, based on the results of ten online panel surveys of UK respondents fielded from mid-April to mid-August 2020, we find that: (i) most …

Trust in UK Government and News Media COVID-19 Information Down, Concerns Over Misinformation from Government and Politicians Up

In this RISJ Factsheet we examine changes in attitudes towards the coronavirus pandemic response in the UK from mid-April to the end of May. This is the fourth in a series of ten factsheets based on an ongoing online panel survey of a representative …

UK Public Opinion Polarised on News Coverage of Government Coronavirus Response, and Concern over Misinformation

In this RISJ Factsheet we examine people's attitudes towards how news organisations, government and other institutions are responding to the coronavirus pandemic in the UK. This is the second in a series of ten factsheets based on an ongoing online …

Measuring the Reach of 'Fake News' and Online Disinformation in Europe

In this factsheet by Richard Fletcher, Alessio Cornia, Lucas Graves and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, we provide top-level usage statistics for the most popular sites that independent fact-checkers and other observers have identified as publishers of false …