A SURVEY ABOUT UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' PERCEPTION OF POST-TRUTH ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Year 2018, Volume: 3 Issue: 4, 53 - 64, 10.11.2018

Bahattin Yalçınkaya Ayşegül Hülcen Dönmez Furkan Aydın Nida Kayalı

https://doi.org/10.26809/joa.2018445555

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to survey university students’ perception of post – truth on social media. The post-truth, which has been selected as the ‘Word of the Year’ by Oxford World Dictionaries in 2016, is a new technological era today. This new era especially effects students who have a habit of access information via social media. This survey is aimed to illustrate how university students evaluate the fake news appeared on social media and to reveal solutions about the possible negative effects of this era.

The method involved in this survey is data collection from students, who represent the majority of social media users, with 5 Likert type scale questionnaires. Data has been collected from two-year degree, undergraduate, post graduate and doctoral university students who continue their studies in public and foundation universities in Turkey. There is not an existed scale to evaluate perception of post truth on social media. The existed scales are related to evaluate the technology addiction in psychology field. A standard scale has not been used and it is not aimed to develop a scale in this study.

Keywords

post-truth, social media, fake news

References

• BANKS, M. (2016). Fighting Fake News[online], American Libraries, https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2016/12/27/fighting-fake-news/ [Date Accessed:11July2018].
• BENJES-SMALL, C., et al. (2013). ‘Teaching Web Evaluation: A Cognitive Development Approach’,Communications In Information Literacy, 7(1), 39-49.
• CASTELLS, M. (2005). Enformasyon Çağı: Ekonomi, Toplum ve Kültür, Birinci Cilt, Ağ ToplumunYükselişi, Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, İstanbul, ISBN:9789756176160.
• DAHL M.,2017, Your Brain Gives Up When Discerning Truth From Lies Gets Too Hard[online],The Cut, https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/how-the-brain-responds-to-hearing-lies.html. [Date Accessed: 09 July 2018].
• Fake News: Home, Indiana University East, Lib Guide [online] http://iue.libguides.com/c.php?g=595482&p=4119773, [Access Date: 11 July 2018]
• FAZIO, L. K. et al. (2015) ‘Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. doi: 10.1037/xge0000098.
• GILBERT, D. T., 1991, How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46(2), 107–119. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.46.2.107
• Global Digital Report 2018 [online], https://digitalreport.wearesocial.com/ [Access Date: 11 july 2018]
• HOWARD H. et al., 2018, Academic Libraries on Social Media: Finding the Students and the Information They Want, Information Technology & Libraries, 37(1), 8-18.doi:10.6017/italv37i1.10160
• JACOBS, T., 2017, The Persuasive Power Of Repeated Falsehoods,[online], Pasific Standart, https://psmag.com/news/the-persuasive-power-of-repeated-falsehoods, [Access Date: 09 July 2018]
• JOYCE, G., 2017, Brexit Data: Post-Truth Politics and the EU Referendum [online], Brand Watch, https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/react-brexit-post-truth/ [Access Date: 13 April 2018]
• KEYES, R., 2017, Hakikat Sonrası :Çağ Günümüz Dünyasında Yalancılık Ve Aldatma, Delidolu Yayınları,İzmir, ISBN: 9786052349021
• KONNIKOVA, M., 2017, Trump’s Lies vs. Your Brain,[online] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658 [Date Accessed: 09 July 2018]
• MEJIA, R.et,al., 2018, ‘White lies: A racial history of the (post) truth’, Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies, 15(2), 109-126, doi: 10.1080/14791420.2018.1456668.
• MONTGOMERY, M., 2017, ‘Post-truth politics?’, Journal of Language and Politics,16(4), 619–639 doi: 10.1075/jlp.17023.mon.
• ÖNAL, H. İ., 2007, Medya Okuryazarlığı: KütüphanelerdeYeniÇalışma Alanı, TürkKütüphaneciliği. 21(3), (335-359.Post-truth, Oxford Dictionaries, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth [Date Accessed: 12 April 2018]
• SPEED, E., MANNION, R.,2017, The Rise of Post-truth Populism in Pluralist Liberal Democracies: Challenges for Health Policy, Int J Health Policy Management, 6(5), 249-251. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2017.19
• STEINMETZ, K., 2016, Oxford's Word of the Year for 2016 Is 'Post-Truth', [online] ,Time http://time.com/4572592/oxford-word-of-the-year-2016-post-truth/ [Access Date: 12 April 2018]
• STENCEL, M., 2017, International fact-checking gains ground, Duke census finds,[online],
• https://reporterslab.org/international-fact-checking-gains-ground/ Date Accessed: 09 july 2018)
• RAHMAN, M. K. and ADNAN, M. A.,2016, ‘Dynamic Weight on Static Trust for trustworthy social media networks’, in 2016,14th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust, PST 2016. doi: 10.1109/PST.2016.7906938.
• ROCHLIN, N., 2017, ‘Fake news: belief in post-truth’, Library Hi Tech., 35(3), 386-392, doi: 10.1108/LHT-03-2017-0062.
• UNKELBACH, C. and ROM, S. C., 2017, ‘A referential theory of the repetition-induced truth effect’, 110-126. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.12.016.
• ÜNAL, R., TAYLAN, A.,2017, Sağlık iletişiminde yalanhaber yanliş enformasyon sorunu ve doğrulama platformlari, Atatürk İletişim Dergisi, (14)1-100.