Cognitive attraction and online misinformation

The spread of online misinformation has gained mainstream attention in recent years. Here I approach this phenomenon from a cultural evolution and cognitive anthropology perspective, focusing on the idea that some cultural traits can be successful because their content taps into general cognitive preferences. I analyse 260 articles from media outlets included in two authoritative lists of websites known for publishing hoaxes and ‘fake news’, tracking the presence of negative content, threat-related information, presence of sexually related material, elements associated to disgust, minimally counterintuitive elements (and a particular category of them, i.e. violations of essentialist beliefs), and social information, intended as presence of salient social interactions (e.g. gossip, cheating, formation of alliances), and as news about celebrities. The analysis shows that these features are, to a different degree, present in most texts, and thus that general cognitive inclinations may contribute to explain the success of online misinformation. I conclude discussing how this account can elucidate questions such as whether and why misinformation online is thriving more than accurate information, or the role of ‘fake news’ as a weapon of political propaganda. Online misinformation, while being an umbrella term covering many different phenomena, can be characterised, in this perspective, not as low-quality information that spread because of the inefficiency of online communication, but as high-quality information that spread because of its efficiency. The difference is that ‘quality’ is not equated to truthfulness but to psychological appeal.

近年来，网络虚假信息的传播引起了主流社会的广泛关注。本研究从文化演化和认知人类学的视角出发，探讨某些文化特征之所以能够成功，是因为其内容触及了普遍的认知偏好。通过对收录在两个权威网站列表中的260篇文章的分析，这些网站以发布欺诈和‘假新闻’而闻名，本研究追踪了负面内容的出现、与威胁相关的信息、与性相关材料的出现、与厌恶相关的元素、最小反直觉元素（尤其是违背本质主义信念的特定类别）以及社会信息的存在，后者包括显著的社会互动（例如，八卦、欺诈、联盟的形成）以及名人新闻。分析表明，这些特征在大多数文本中以不同程度上存在，因此普遍的认知倾向可能有助于解释网络虚假信息的成功。本研究进一步讨论了这一解释如何阐明诸如网络虚假信息为何比准确信息更为繁荣，或‘假新闻’作为政治宣传武器的角色等问题。从这一视角来看，网络虚假信息，虽然是一个涵盖许多不同现象的宽泛术语，其传播并非由于网络沟通的低效，而是由于其传播的高效性，因此可以将其定义为高质量的信息传播。这里的‘质量’并非等同于真实性，而是指其心理上的吸引力。