New report reveals the experiences of Australians encountering misinformation online
Author Natalie Campbell
Date 6 December 2024
The report ‘Online Misinformation in Australia’, a collaboration between Prof Sora Park (University of Canberra), Assoc Prof Tanya Notley and Dr Aimee Hourigan (Western Sydney University), Prof Michael Dezuanni (QUT) and ADM+S Affiliate Dr T.J. Thomson (RMIT University) reveals a significant gap between how people perceive their ability to verify information online, compared to their actual ability.
The study included two nationally representative surveys of 3,852 and 2,115 adult Australians, as well as a week-long digital diary study with 55 participants to provide an intimate look into everyday experiences with misinformation online.
Results revealed that more than half of Australians encounter misinformation online in a typical week, and this proportion increases the more active a person is on social media.
“Misinformation has many harms, from the individual effects of bullying or scams to broader societal risks around legislation and deliberative democracy,” explains Dr Thomson.
“Understanding more about online misinformation and adult Australians’ abilities to respond to it is vital so that we can protect our mental health, protect our assets during the current cost-of-living crisis, and ensure we have important societal conversations that are based on facts and verifiable evidence rather rumours, conjecture, and false or misleading information.”
Key findings from the study include:
- Most adult Australians are not able to identify misinformation online
- Many adults overestimated their ability to identify misinformation online
- Online news and information consumption habits are related to people’s ability to verify information online
- Economics, celebrity and crime/crisis are the top topics of misinformation people encountered during the diary study
- Text-based content is the most prevalent form of misinformation people identified during the diary study
- Adults want to develop their media literacy abilities
While misinformation research is often topical – in the context of COVID-19, political referenda, or elections – this study focuses on the way misinformation manifests in everyday online communication and social media use.
“Through the project’s in-depth diary study, we’re able to explore the false, misleading, or untrustworthy claims adult Australians encounter on a daily basis and better understand the assumptions these people have about news and information sources, information attributes, and communication platforms,” explains Dr Hourigan, who co-led the diary study component with Dr Thomson.
Of the 80 percent of Australians who think misinformation on social media needs to be addressed, 93 percent of these agree that people need to be taught how to identify misinformation, 91 percent think social media platforms should monitor, label, and remove misinformation, and 87 percent think the government should introduce laws to make social media platforms remove harmful misinformation.
“Eight in ten Australians think the spread of misinformation online needs to be addressed and this starts with your own media literacy knowledge and skills,” says Assoc Prof Notley.
“We can all hone our media literacy by asking three simple questions when encountering potentially dodgy claims online: Who made the claim? What is the evidence? And what do trusted sources say?”
This research was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme – LP220100208 Addressing Misinformation with Media Literacy through Cultural Institutions.
You can access this report via APO, as well as an infographic with study results.
