A Simon Fraser University study has found that people in the US are more likely to share misinformation and conspiracy theories than people in other English-speaking countries.
Researchers were given a rare chance to study the sharing of the same conspiracy theories and misinformation across multiple countries when the world stopped in early 2020.
The U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are all English-speaking democracies.
People in the US are not more likely to see misinformation than people in other countries, but they are more likely to share it with their followers.
America is not a normal country. Recent research shows that Americans play a bigger role in sharing misinformation on social media than previously thought.
There are a number of reasons why Americans are different from other countries.
Americans are more likely to share theories to promote or show support for them and use them to connect with others than people in other countries.
The sharing of misinformation correlated with the political landscape of the U.S. People who identified as conservative were more likely to share misinformation online.
People with populist attitudes and distrust of health officials are more likely to spread misinformation.
According to a survey in Canada, the number one reason people share conspiracy theories online is for people to be aware of them and the second is to criticize them.
More than half of those sharing misinformation in each country shared it on Facebook. They studied thousands of nationally-representative surveys in July 2020 and January 2021.
The Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media contains more information about Mark Pickup and his co-workers. The DOI is 10.1685/jqd.
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