Why So Serious?: Survey Trolls and Misinformation

Abstract

Following the 2016 Presidential Election, there has been growing concern with the prevalence of fake news stories and political rumors; and the consequences this might have on the level of misinformation held by the American public. Most research has assumed that self-reported beliefs in political misinformation are entirely sincere, and while there has been some research on the extent to which reporting belief in misinformation is expressive, most scholars conclude that American public is genuinely misinformed. We offer another possibility: reported beliefs in political misinformation may be partially the result of satisficing and of respondents deliberately responding in a humorous manner—trolling the survey. Using original survey data from two separate studies conducted in 2017 that included measures of low incident demographic items, self-reported response insincerity, and a wide variety of political and non-political beliefs, we examine the extent to which estimates of political misinformation are biased by measurement error and survey trolling. Our results suggest that not only do “survey trolls” exist, and report beliefs in systematically different ways, but their humorous responding can upwardly bias the level of belief in more recent cases of political rumors and misinformation (e.g., PizzaGate).