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Political Discourse and Discussions of "Fake News" on Reddit : = Prevalence, Popularity, and Perceived Credibility.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Political Discourse and Discussions of "Fake News" on Reddit :/
Reminder of title:	Prevalence, Popularity, and Perceived Credibility.
Author:	Tsou, Andrew.
Description:	1 online resource (305 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-07, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-07A.
Subject:	Information science. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798381375114

Political Discourse and Discussions of "Fake News" on Reddit : = Prevalence, Popularity, and Perceived Credibility.
Tsou, Andrew.

Political Discourse and Discussions of "Fake News" on Reddit :Prevalence, Popularity, and Perceived Credibility. - 1 online resource (305 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-07, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

In the past, political disagreements were largely a matter of opinion, with individuals disagreeing on matters of policy or personal values. Now, however, different political factions frequently no longer agree on basic facts, let alone on how to interpret or act on them. This dissertation considers the ways in which "fake news" and its variants (misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, etc.) are discussed by users of the news aggregator and social media site Reddit. A series of controversial news topics were identified, and Reddit comments (n=571,215) pertaining to these topics were gathered using an automated script. The primary methods that were used for this study are content analysis and CMDA, both of which informed the development of two coding schemes that were applied to the gathered comments. One coding scheme focused on discourse features, while the second scheme allowed for a granular analysis of comments that actively discussed fake news, misinformation, propaganda, and other distortions of the truth. User upvotes were used as a proxy for presumed credibility, and discourse styles and content were compared between broadly defined political subfactions (liberal, conservative, and neutral). The results of this research found that discussions about fake news, misinformation, etc. are prevalent on political Reddit threads, constituting 13% of comments, with marked differences in commenting behavior across liberal, conservative, and neutral Reddit communities. Most significantly, the conservative communities were less likely to discuss lies, misinformation, etc. when compared to the neutral and liberal subreddits. The results also provide insights into echo chambers on Reddit; not only are commenters in partisan communities less prone to include second-person attacks than commenters in neutral spaces are, the partisan communities use "us vs. them" words such as "our," "we," and "their/them/they" more often than would be expected. This suggests that participants in these communities are less likely to challenge each others' assumptions and worldviews, thus contributing to political divisions and extremism. Overall, the results of this research contribute to understanding online political discourse, contemporary notions of credibility, and the ways in which online commenters react to the "fake news" phenomenon itself.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798381375114Subjects--Topical Terms:

561178
Information science.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Computer-mediated communicationIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Political Discourse and Discussions of "Fake News" on Reddit : = Prevalence, Popularity, and Perceived Credibility.
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