Motivation with misinformation: Conceptualizing lacuna individuals and publics as knowledge-deficient, issue-negative activists

ABSTRACT

As fake news continues to abound on the Internet, the need for theorizing on the impact of misinformation on individuals’ perceptions of various social issues is dire. Using the issue of vaccine negativity in the United States, this study proposes the idea of lacuna individuals as issue-specific active publics holding negative attitudes and having deficient issue-specific knowledge. Results reveal that knowledge-deficient, vaccine-negative individuals display higher levels of perceptions, motivations, and active communication behaviors about vaccines. Results, therefore, support the conceptualization of lacuna individuals, and publics, as knowledge-deficient activists holding high levels of negative attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• fake news
• knowledge deficiency
• lacuna
• situational theory
• vaccines

Notes

¹ It should be noted here that the fact or factual knowledge discussed in this study refers to scientifically legitimized and accepted data of the day. I acknowledge that individuals may have different belief systems, and what counts as fact may differ based on a variety of factors, including culture and faith. However, for the purpose of this study, information that has been legitimized by the scientific community is what constitutes factual data.

² The term quasi-lacuna here is used because the segmentation performed did not include all three determinants of lacuna individuals; rather, the segmentation procedure involved only two of the three characteristics, yielding knowledge-deficient, vaccine-negative individuals, rather than lacuna individuals. For classification of individuals into lacuna and nonlacuna individuals, issue activeness would need to be included as a segmentation criterion, along with knowledge deficiency and issue negativity.