The price of (dis)trust – profiling believers of (dis)information in the Hungarian context

ABSTRACT

Taking a person-centered approach – we explored different constellations of social-psychological characteristics associated with (dis)information belief in order to identify distinct subgroups whose (dis)information belief stems from different social or political motives. Hungarian participants (N = 296) judged the accuracy of fake and real news items with a political (pro/anti-government) and nonpolitical narrative. Two profiles of ‘fake news believers’ and two of ‘fake news non-believers’ emerged, with a high conspiracy mentality being the main marker of the former two. These two ‘fake news believers’ profiles were distinguishable: one exhibited extreme trust in the media and in politicians, and the other deep distrust. Our results suggest that not only political distrust, but also excessive trust can be associated with disinformation belief in less democratic social contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Disinformation
• populism
• fake news
• political trust
• Hungary

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study and the supplementary materials are openly available in OSF at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QSKFM

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of the DECA (The democratic epistemic capacities in the age of algorithms) project (Funding decision number: 352557; sub-project decision number: 352599, PI: Mervi Pantti). The project is funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC) established within the Academy of Finland.