A NEW POLL conducted by Ireland Thinks on behalf of The Good Information Project has found that 68% of respondents have seen relatives or friends sharing misinformation on social media or messaging apps.

Exposure to perceived online misinformation shared by friends and family is high across every age demographic, from 58% for those over 65 to 77% for those between the ages of 25-34. This discrepancy could suggest that younger people are more likely to identify what they see as misinformation, or simply that they spend more time online. 

Regionally, the range of exposure to misinformation was very similar – it was lowest in Munster at 58% and highest in Leinster at 73%.

The polling paints a clear landscape of misinformation being spread across social media in Ireland, as well as private messaging apps, with only 12% of respondents claiming that they have never seen anyone they know share misinformation.

Ireland Thinks conducted the poll at the beginning of April, carefully selecting 1,135 respondents from a pool of 20,000. Results were tuned by a weighting procedure all to ensure that the poll was exactly representative in terms of age, gender, region, educational attainment, religious adherence, housing status, and past voting behaviour. 

The data suggests that people respond differently to misinformation or disinformation depending on whether it is shared by a source they know personally. 

51% say that they have had an argument either on or offline with someone they know personally as a result of perceived misinformation.

This figure shoots up when you adjust for age demographics – 67% for those between the ages of 18 and 24, and 70% for those between 35-44. It’s significantly lower for those over the age of 65 (38%). When adjusted for social class or gender, however, results stay noticeably close to the mean.

Aontú voters are by far the most likely to ignore misinformation or disinformation shared by someone they know, with two-thirds saying they ignore it but don’t mute or block the sharer. Solidarity-PBP voters are most likely to engage with the sharer either publicly or privately with 48% falling into one of those two categories, followed closely by Fine Gael voters on 47%.

When misinformation is spotted online shared by sources that the respondent doesn’t know personally, the approach was largely to ‘either ignore’ or ‘ignore and block’ with 77% falling into one of those two categories. Just 13% said they would engage and respond publicly, and 3% would respond privately. This compares to 25% who respond and engage privately when the source is somebody they do know.

Only 6% of all respondents say that they have never seen misinformation shared by a source they don’t know online. 

Precisely one-quarter of respondents say that they have had their minds changed by a factcheck article. However, 68% have said that their mind has never been changed by a factcheck, with a further 6% saying they don’t know. 

Labour voters were most likely to have their mind changed by a factcheck at 42%, followed by Social Democrat voters at 36%. However, in the case of every single political alignment, the majority said that their minds had not been changed by a factcheck.

Those who said that they ‘would not vote’ gave a unanimous, 100% ‘no’ response to the question. 

Speaking during a Good Information Project panel earlier this week, deputy director of the Institute for Media, Democracy and Society Dr Eileen Culloty noted that “changing someone’s mind shouldn’t be the criterion of success for a factcheck,” and that such reporting should instead be used as a resource by others as part of a more holistic, society-wide approach to tackling misinformation. 

This work is also co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.