CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Natsuma, Yuji |
|---|---|
| Title | The Influence of Political Memes on Belief on Fake News: A Dual Process Theory Perspective |
| Summary | Against the backdrop of the digital revolution and the “memefication of politics” (Dean, 2019), so called political memes have become ubiquitous all-over social media. While political memes have allowed for increased political engagement, they have also become a part of political propaganda and misinformation. The paper addresses the following research question. Are people exposed to political memes more likely to believe in false information in political memes? Building upon the works of dual process theory and visual processing fluency, this thesis hypothesizes that political memes have the ability of producing a “truthiness effect” which activates heuristic thinking, resulting in individuals becoming more gullible and influenced by political memes. To tackle this hypothesis, a survey experiment was conducted online (n =134). The results showed that the null hypotheses cannot be rejected. |
| Supervisor | Angelovana Mariyana |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/natsuma_yuji.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University