"The perception of disinformation as societal risk has reached a troubling peak amid the COVID-19 pandemic, strategically targeting vulnerable audiences through digital media by mirroring characteristics of vox populi disinformation. This study investigates the conditions under which COVID-19-relate ... d disinformation referring to a polarized (refugees) and neutral (runners) out-group appears most credible. In the early stages of the pandemic, we conducted a pre-registered online survey experiment with a representative German sample (N = 1,117 ). Results indicated that those with low trust in the media judged subtle and completely fabricated types of disinformation as more credible than accurate information. Presenting the article as a social media post from an ordinary user, rather than an official source, had no discernible impact on credibility evaluations; participants accurately assessed the credibility of a random source. We conclude that people are generally able to recognize disinformation—unless they already mistrust the media. This paper addresses why disinformation triggers strong reactions in targeted groups and how it thrives in the participatory digital landscape." (Abstract) more

"Responding to widespread concerns about misinformation’s impact on democracy, we conducted an experiment in which we exposed German participants to different degrees of misinformation on COVID-19 connected to politicized (immigration) and apolitical (runners) issues (N = 1,490). Our key findings ... show that partially false information is more credible and persuasive than completely false information, and also more difficult to correct. People with congruent prior attitudes are more likely to perceive misinformation as credible and agree with its positions than people with incongruent prior attitudes. We further show that although fact-checkers can lower the perceived credibility of misinformation on both runners and migrants, corrective messages do not affect attitudes toward migrants. As a key contribution, we show that different degrees of misinformation can have different impacts: more nuanced deviations from facticity may be more harmful as they are difficult to detect and correct while being more credible." (Abstract) more