Identifying Linguistic Cues of Fake News Associated with Cognitive and Affective Processing: Evidence from NeuroIS

Bernhard Lutz (), Marc T. P. Adam (), Stefan Feuerriegel (), Nicolas Pröllochs () and Dirk Neumann ()
Additional contact information
Bernhard Lutz: University of Freiburg
Marc T. P. Adam: University of Newcastle
Stefan Feuerriegel: ETH Zurich
Nicolas Pröllochs: University of Giessen
Dirk Neumann: University of Freiburg

A chapter in Information Systems and Neuroscience, 2020, pp 16-23 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract False information such as “fake news” is widely believed to influence the opinions of individuals. So far, information systems (IS) literature is lacking a theoretical understanding of how users react and respond to fake news. In this study, we analyze drivers of cognitive and affective processing in terms of linguistic cues. For this purpose, we performed a NeuroIS experiment that involved N = 42 subjects with both eye tracking and heart rate measurements. We find that users spend more cognitive effort (more eye fixations) in assessing the veracity of fake news when it is characterized by better readability and less affective words. In addition, we find that fake news is more likely to trigger affective responses (lower heart rate variability) when it is characterized by a higher degree of analytic writing. Our findings contribute to IS theory by disentangling linguistic cues that help to explain how fake news is processed. The insights can aid researchers and practitioners in designing IS to better counter fake news.

Keywords: Fake news; Linguistic cues; Information processing; Eye tracking; ECG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:lnichp:978-3-030-60073-0_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030600730

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-60073-0_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organization from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().