“Jag skiter i att det är fejk, det är förjävligt ändå”. Unga svenskars uppfattning om eller hur fake news påverkar deras och andras politiska ståndpunkter
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to examine if or how politically active Swedish youths, 20-30
years, perceive that fake news affects their and others political positions. Fake news is a
phenomenon that has grown remarkably in the last few years. In short, it can be described
as false and misleading information presented as true information, often with a political or
economical purpose. The growing use of social media has created a possibility for people to
spread fake news at a growing rate than ever before. Fake news has made its way into the
public debate since Donald Trump used it frequently in the presidential election in 2016 to
discredit his opponents. One theory that has researched the impact of media effects and
more specifically what people think of this impact is called the Third person effect. The
theory explains that people think that other people are more vulnerable to the impact of
media than they are themselves. To broaden the knowledge about how people perceive that
fake news affects them can give us an insight into whether fake news is something the
Swedish population should be cautious about.
This study is completed with six qualitative interviews, and one preparing survey that was
sent out before the interviews. The study aims to answer three main questions about how
people perceive that fake news affects their political views. These questions are “What does
the respondents news consumption look like and what is their perception about what fake
news is?”, “How do the respondents perceive that fake news affect their political views?”
and “How do the respondents perceive that fake news affect other individuals in society?”.
With these questions we will be able to answer the aim of the study, which is to examine if
or how young Swedish people perceive that fake news affect their political views.
The results show that all respondents had knowledge about fake news and were worried
about how fake news could be used for the wrong purposes. The confidence about being
able to determine which news are true and false was high among the left wing respondents.
All respondents think that the reason for fake news being a big phenomenon today is
because it is more favorable to spread fake news with strong opinions to attract people and
form opinions. The results also found that the majority of the respondents often have more
trust for information that is shared by opinion formers that share the same political views
as the respondents. When it comes to fake news impact the respondents believe that they
are being affected by both true news and fake news, but they believe that there are other
specific groups that are more vulnerable for this impact. Whether fake news has an impact
on the respondents political views is something that they partly agree with. They think that
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they are being affected in the form of them being more skeptical of social media, but not
affected in a way that completely changes their political views. When it comes to the
perception of the impact on other groups the respondents do believe that others get
affected to the point of changing political views. One of the most eminent results of this
study was that the left wing respondents thought that there is a more organized structure
in creating and spreading fake news on the extreme right wing, and that it could be big
opinion formers that spread fake news, in comparison to the extreme left wing.
Based on our study we draw the conclusion that there is a broad knowledge about how news
affects you but that the impact of fake news is bigger on others than the individual itself.
This study also showed that young politically educated individuals have knowledge about
their media use and tend to use media based on their needs. There is also a broad
knowledge about fake news and how this can affect other groups.
Degree
Student essay
Collections
View/ Open
Date
2024-03-04Author
Jarnerup, Lova
Linnér, Ella
Keywords
Fake news, politisk tillhörighet, trovärdighet, förtroende, fake news, political stance, credibility, trust
Series/Report no.
1251
Language
swe