 Hello everyone. Are citizens with populist attitudes affected the most by radical right-wing disinformation? Can exposure to radical right-wing populist messages lead to support for radical right-wing positions? To answer these questions we have invited Michael Hamilliers from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research at the University of Amsterdam. He is sharing the findings of his research, published this year in our Open Access Journal, Media and Communication. I'm Ulrich Silve and today let's talk about media and communication. Hello Michael, welcome to our episode. Hi, thanks. The first question for you would be why is this topic so important? I think disinformation that revolves around sort of deliberate manipulation or fabrication of content with intention to deceive recipients is really important because there's really harmful intent behind the creation of such information. So I think it's really important that we as researchers and also for society more generally really try to understand how exposure to false information is affecting citizens. That's why I think it's important to study the effects of disinformation also in experimental settings. Of course, and when you started this research, so what were you hoping to find? What was the research gap? Yeah, so what I was manipulating in this experiment is not just false information in the sense that facts were completely fabricated and completely aligned with a deceptive political agenda. But also disinformation that relies on more subtle manipulations and stays closer to the truth, which has also been referred to as small information sort of the deliberate misuse of existing information that is placed in a different context. How that actually affects people and whether there's a difference in credibility between real information, completely fabricated information, but also less strong deviates from truthfulness, all aligning with a radical right wing populist perspective. I was hoping to find that there was no. There was a strong difference in credibility between the most manipulated and the most accurate or most authentic content, and if people are actually able to differentiate between different levels of truthfulness. Okay, so let us know about the findings. Yeah, so the most surprising finding for me at least is that people don't make very clear distinctions in terms of credibility between disinformation, the most fabricated type and authentic information. So real political speech or something that's based on actually accurate information to think really points to this debate that people have a hard time distinguishing between true information and false information. So the first surprise for me, but also an interesting finding was that sort of the disinformation stays closest to reality had the strongest effect on radical right wing issue positions. And how would you say these findings can impact in terms of public policies, individual choice. So how can these findings translate into real life situations. But I think it's important also if you look at how policy that aims to deal with misinformation but also how we fight or how the global fight against misinformation is focusing mostly on the strongest deviations from reality the most strongest types of conspiracy narratives and very strong lies. I think what is important is to take into account that also these more subtle manipulations and disinformation that stays closer to reality also can have a strong impact on people's belief. It's also important that policy and our global response to Mr disinformation also focuses on is more subtle manipulations. Of course, you mentioned before some surprising findings for you. Can you indicate to the researchers out there. So what comes next in this topic. So what's next to study. Yeah, what I think is important is that this this study only focuses on textual disinformation with a very strong anti immigration perspective. But I think future research also take you to kind of disinformation come in many different forms, such as deep fakes or cheap fakes that really relies on videos, but also more embeddings on social media or ordinary citizens communicating this information. Also in the forms of bots and trolls. So I think sort of the contextual factors that help to shape disinformation. I think it's important for future research to also take these differences in the context of false information into account. Can you provide some additional resources some additional materials about the topic discussed today of any format. Yeah, I think there are a lot of nice policy briefs out there if you look for them and I think it's also good for people to find how misinformation is different in different national settings. So my studies and also think from a lot of other literature out there is really focused on the US or Western Europe. I think it's good for for listeners to also take into account sort of the global perspective and try to find policy papers that have been written in different countries about the dynamics of misinformation which are very different across national settings. I always like to finish our episodes with a punchline of what we just discussed. So if there is anything you want our audience to remember about this talk, what would be Michael. Yeah, I think that's factual knowledge and truthfulness and reality have become very much contested debates and that's in this sort of fragmented setting that people no longer make a very strong distinction between levels of truthfulness on the whole and that deception can be credible. Whereas actually truthfully, if you can have a strong impact on attitudes, we really have to take into account that there are so many different degrees of deception and that's prooffulness has become also partially in the eye of the beholder in a time where there are so many competing narratives that all compete for being acknowledged as legitimate versions of reality. Thank you, Michael. This episode is available on the Let's Talk About Media and Communication website on Kojitatu's YouTube channel as well as in podcast directories such as Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, etc. Michael, it was a pleasure. Thanks. It was a pleasure talking to you.