CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Számely, Júlia Margit |
|---|---|
| Title | Understanding Misinformation Engagement through Digital Trace data: From Easy-Access to Donated Data |
| Summary | With the growing prevalence of misinformation online, which undermines trust, distorts democratic discourse, and hinders responses to global challenges, understanding the characteristics of individuals who are susceptible to misinformation is essential for mitigating its far-reaching consequences. While personal and socio-demographic characteristics associated with online misinformation engagement have received extensive research attention in the past years, much of this work has relied on self-reported accounts of misinformation engagement or on observations in experimental settings. This thesis argues that to better understand who engages with misinformation online, researchers should complement traditional methods with the use of digital trace data. On the one hand, self-reports provide valuable insights into attitudes and motivations as well as a straightforward approach to obtaining socio-demographic information on individuals, and on the other hand, digital trace data captures actual instances of online behaviour—including misinformation engagement—within the environments in which they originally occur. Integrating these sources allows for a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of misinformation engagement. The three empirical studies included in this thesis address various aspects of this approach. The first study, based on a sample of users from the U.S. and Western Europe, demonstrates that even simple, easily accessible behavioural metrics, proxying for personal characteristics, can serve as initial indicators of misinformation-sharing behaviour. We find that user characteristics on X (previously known as Twitter), such as activity levels and account age, were significantly associated with misinformation sharing. The second study examines the conditions under which richer and more detailed digital behavioural data can be ethically and practically collected. The study investigates the determinants of willingness to donate digital trace data from social media platforms in an experimental setting, in two distinct political and cultural contexts—the United States and Hungary. Across the two samples, the monetary incentive offered for participation emerged as the strongest predictor, demonstrating that, with appropriate incentives, data donation can be effectively achieved. The final study combines survey data with donation based digital trace data from a representative sample of Hungarian internet users to examine the extent to which personal and socio-demographic characteristics, and online behavioural patterns of individuals are associated with misinformation engagement in an underexplored, but socio-politically important context. The findings show that age, and online behaviours, such as activity levels and engagement with certain communities, were significantly associated with misinformation engagement. Together, these studies illustrate a progression of approaches to studying misinformation engagement—from large-scale, low-granularity data to rich, survey-linked digital trace data—and contribute to the understanding of the characteristics and behaviours of who engages with misinformation online. |
| Supervisor | Omodei, Elisa; Koltai, Júlia |
| Department | Network Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/szamely_julia.pdf |
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