Media literacy and partisan convergence across social network sites

ABSTRACT

The existing literature highlights social network sites (SNS) as important channels for consuming news and receiving misinformation. However, people surf multiple SNS daily, such as Facebook, Twitter, Line, etc. People also connect and interact with each other, given the characteristics of specific SNS. Driven by partisan bias, partisan supporters may be driven to converge on a specific SNS due to a political echo chamber that exists there. In such a partisan convergence scenario, politicized SNS usage may lead to bias to color the spread of fact-checking and, therefore, politically bias SNS users’ level of media literacy. We examine this hypothesis in a pre-registered national survey (n = 1060) in the 2020 Taiwan Presidential Election. Results show that (1), in general, the usage of the private messaging app Line is related to a lower level of media literacy. The effect holds across political and non-political misinformation items. (2) DPP supporters are much more likely to use Facebook than other supporters, while their political opponents are alienated from Facebook. Therefore, (3) Facebook usage is related to a higher media literacy discerning DPP-related fake news but not others, and the effect exists beyond DPP supporters.

KEYWORDS:

• Media literacy
• Misinformation
• Partisan bias
• Taiwan politics
• Fake news

Notes

¹ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/20/facebook-republican-shift/ Access: September 27, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/28/there-is-dormant-trump-vote-best-place-look-probably-isnt-facebook-memes/ Access: September 27, 2020.

² For example, the performance of fact-checking by Taiwan Fact-Check Center during the campaign was later awarded by the International Fact Checking Network. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/these-are-the-winners-of-2020-global-fact-awards/ Access: June 29, 2020.

³ https://report.twnic.tw/2019/assets/download/TWNIC_TaiwanInternetReport_2019_CH.pdf Access: June 20, 2020.

⁴ In the 2020 proportional representative legislative election, DPP received 34%, KMT 33%, TPP 11%, NPP 8%, TSP 3%. Source: https://db.cec.gov.tw/. Access: July 12, 2022.

⁵ https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/27/21043450/twitch-streamers-leaving-mixer-facebook-YouTube-ninja-shroud-disguisedtoast Access: July 2 2020; https://www.ttshow.tw/news/59985/ Access: July 2 2020.