E-mails, not Internet use, encourage belief in political rumors

Washington, March 08 -- A new study suggests that use of the Internet in general does not make people more likely to believe political rumors.

However, one form of Internet communication - e-mail - does seem to have troubling consequences for the spread and belief of rumors.

"I think a lot of people will be surprised to learn that using the Internet doesn't necessarily promote belief in rumors. Many people seem to think that's self-evident," said R. Kelly Garrett, author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.

"The Internet does make it easier to circulate rumors, but going online doesn't make us more gullible."

However, e-mail is a special case. People are much more likely to believe false rumors that they receive in e-mails from friends and family.

People seem to be wary about rumors they read on websites and blogs, Garrett said. They are more likely to check these rumors to see if they are correct.

"The problem is that we are more likely to let our defenses down when we're dealing with our friends, which is why e-mail can have such harmful consequences. We don't normally question what our friends tell us," he said.

The study involved a telephone survey of 600 Americans in November 2008, immediately after the presidential election. Participants were asked about their exposure to 10 rumors that were circulating about the two major presidential tickets, Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin.

The rumors included eight patently false statements, ones that were rejected by both presidential candidates and by major fact-checking organizations such as FactCheck.org. Participants were also asked about two true statements.

Receiving e-mails only promoted belief in rumors about the candidate whom the person opposed, the study found. And people were more likely to share e-mails as belief in rumors about the opposed candidate increased.

Results showed that use of the internet and online sources of political information did indeed lead people to encounter more rumors about the candidates. And the more rumors someone heard, the more they believed. In fact, for every two additional rumors that a person heard, the average number of rumors believed increased by about one.

The finding will appear in the April 2011 issue of the journal Human Communication Research.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Asian News International.

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