Loughborough University
Browse
Hall-Chadwick-Vaccari - MCS - Misinformation Distinction - FINAL July 24 2023.pdf (364.7 kB)

Online misinformation and everyday ontological narratives of social distinction

Download (364.7 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-08-15, 11:14 authored by Natalie-Anne HallNatalie-Anne Hall, Andrew ChadwickAndrew Chadwick, Cristian Vaccari
Most research into online misinformation has investigated its direct effects—the impact it may have on citizens’ beliefs and behavior. Much less attention has been paid to how citizens themselves make sense of misinformation as a broader social problem. We integrate theories of narrative, identity, cultural capital, and social distinction to examine how people construct the problem of misinformation and their orientation to it. We show how people engage in everyday ontological narratives of social distinction. These involve making a variety of discursive moves to position one’s ‘taste’ in information consumption as superior to others constructed as lower in a social hierarchy. This serves to enhance social status by separating oneself from misinformation, which is presented as ‘other people’s problem.’ We argue that these narratives have significant implications not only for citizens’ vigilance toward misinformation but also their receptiveness to interventions by policymakers, fact-checkers, news organizations, and media educators.

Funding

Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG2020-019)

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • Communication and Media

Published in

Media, Culture and Society

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Media, Culture and Society and the definitive published version will be available at https://journals.sagepub.com/home/mcs. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/process-for-requesting-permission

Acceptance date

2023-07-24

ISSN

0163-4437

eISSN

1460-3675

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Andrew Chadwick. Deposit date: 14 August 2023