Search

The spread of misinformation and disinformation is an urgent global problem threatening information quality. Third-party fact checking is widely used to mitigate its harmful effects. Yet, the relationship between fact checking and misinformation spread is understudied. This study addresses this gap and investigates public trust in fact checkers and engagement with debunked claims. Drawing on the theory of motivated reasoning, we use real-life disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread.disinformation about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to flood victims during the 2022 Australian election. We undertake a survey experiment (N = 8,235) and alter the fact-check source to measure public trust and subsequent engagement with disinformation. Overall, we find high trust in fact checking. However, we also find a third of participants will likely engage with disinformation despite trusting a fact check that explicitly states it is false. Our study lends support to motivated reasoning, finding a disconnect between trust in fact checkers and their capacity to limit disinformation spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middle power states in the Indo-Pacific region face a challenging foreign policy environment in light of geopolitical and economic rivalry between the United States and China. In this context, what factors shape the foreign policy attitudes of middle power publics? This article presents results from a set of survey-based experiments conducted in Canada and Australia, two archetypal middle power states located on the Pacific Rim. Demographically representative samples of both publics were presented with randomized vignettes highlighting facets of bilateral relations with the United States, regional partners (Mexico in the Canadian case, and Indonesia in the Australian case), and China. Results indicate that making different aspects of a particular relationship salient as part of the vignette shapes perceptions of and preferences toward relations with the state in question. Foreign policy attitudes are thus amenable to framing effects. Still, results point to different frames having greater relevance to different bilateral relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public support for the welfare state – and the policies constituting it – has long been a topic of research. Previous research on support for redistribution has tended to focus on how either country-level characteristics (particularly those relating to the macro-economy such as levels of economic development or income inequality) or individual-level political factors (such as left-right political orientation and sociodemographic factors) shape support for redistribution. To date, empirical research has insufficiently tested how macroeconomic context and individual political orientations interact. Research has also obscured whether the effects of macroeconomic context hold cross-sectionally (across country contexts) or longitudinally (within countries over time). Drawing on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), this article examines the cross-sectional (between-country) and longitudinal (within-country) interactive relationships involving economic development and income inequality (on one hand) and left–right political orientations (on the other) in shaping preferences for redistribution. Results indicate that there are larger left–right cleavages in attitudes in wealthier countries, more unequal countries, and countries where inequality is increasing. These findings challenge the dominant practice of focusing exclusively on additive effects of individual-level or country-level factors by showing the importance of paying attention to cross-level interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical models illustrating how mass publics organise their views on foreign policy issues abound. Models that posit militant internationalism and cooperative internationalism as the two factors structuring mass foreign policy attitudes and that typically rely on American survey data have given way to models positing a larger number of underlying factors supported by cross-national survey data. Still, there are few studies assessing the cross-national validity of multi-factor models. Further, middle power states that must navigate between international leadership and followership remain understudied. This article draws on new survey data from Canada and Australia—two archetypal middle power states—to replicate a recent and influential model of foreign policy attitudes comprised of four factors: cooperative internationalism, militant internationalism, isolationism, and support for global justice. Using an exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM) framework, it finds that the four-factor structure of foreign policy attitudes observed in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany obtains among the Canadian and Australian publics, yet there are country-specific nuances that suggest differences in the ways Canadians and Australians perceive foreign policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian public voted in November 2017 in favour of changing the law to allow for same-sex marriage – only the second such national popular vote after Ireland in 2015. Though 61.6% of the Australian public voting in the Marriage Law Postal Survey voted Yes in support of marriage equality, this support was not uniformly distributed across the country, with support at the electoral division level varying between 26.1% and 83.7%. What, then, explains such variation in support for same-sex marriage among the Australian public? In this article, we advance an aggregate, electoral division-level explanation of the Yes vote that links support for the legalisation of same-sex marriage to a set of local-level political and socio-demographic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 Canadian federal election campaign brought to the fore partisan cleavages in approaches to immigration policy, refugee policy, and multiculturalism. At the level of mass public opinion, research on attitudes toward immigration in Canada and other immigrant-receiving countries has pointed to a variety of explanatory factors. These include partisanship, economic interests, and feelings of cultural threat. There is also a growing literature on the effects of local demographic (specifically ethnic or immigrant) context in shaping attitudes toward immigration. Such a contextually-oriented approach, however, has been pursued by relatively few analysts of Canadian public opinion. This article endeavours to fill this gap. It brings together recent survey data and local-level demographic data to answer the question of what leads Canadians to hold open or restrictionist attitudes toward immigrants and refugees, focusing on the roles of partisanship, contextual measures of local immigrant populations, and perceptions of economic and cultural threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]