Sceptic Britons are least likely to be deceived by fake news
FAKE news has been blamed for swaying the US election and spreading harmful conspiracy theories. So it may be comforting to know that Britain is among the world’s least gullible nations – and readers rarely fall for fake stories.
Data from Ipsos Mori showed that one in three British people admitted to having been tricked by a “fake news” article – among the lowest levels in the world. This compared to almost half of people in the US, Russia and Australia.
Brazil had the highest level of susceptibility to fake news, with 62 per cent of respondents from the country saying they had believed a fake news story, with Saudi Arabia not far behind.
Bobby Duffy, managing director of Ipsos Mori’s social research institute, said that British people were less likely to be wrong when asked to estimate figures, such as the level of immigration, than people in other countries, including Italy and the US.
The UK is a “sceptical and calculating nation”, he said. He added that newspapers and broadcasters were “well-regulated relative to lots of the other countries that we’ve asked. There is an element of we don’t know how good we’ve got it in terms of the fakery that goes on in the media in other countries. We’re lucky in not having that exposure to fabricated news stories,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
However, the survey, released for the launch of Mr Duffy’s book about misinformation,the Perils of Perception: Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything, also found that British people have little faith in their peers to detect fake news, with just 28 per cent saying they were confident in the average person’s ability to spot it – among the lowest levels in any country.
Social media has been blamed for making it easy for people to only see things that cater to their preconceptions and reducing the opportunities to have discussions with people who hold opposing views. Almost one in three British people admitted to “living in a bubble” online, spending time speaking to people and reading stories which confirmed their political beliefs.