Fake news e o viés cognitivo dos seus propagadores: insights para a tomada de decisões das organizações

Abstract

The main objective of this research was to understand the phenomenon of fake news in a scenario of political polarization, having as object of analysis the Brazilian elections of 2018. The methodology used in this research was quantitative, through statistics, and was based on the analysis of posts from Twitter users, who are spreaders of true and fake news. The behavior of the variable “dissemination of fake news” was analyzed with respect to the political polarity of their propagators, in the expectation that this analysis would bring new insights into the phenomenon. The empirical analysis resulting from the field study allowed us to understand that people who have a position on a certain subject are more likely to disseminate information that is in accordance with their cognitive bias, regardless of whether it is true information or not. This research allows a discussion of a scientific gap related to the impact of fake news on human actions and decisions. For the organizational world, the understanding of the fact that different cognitive biases should be considered by companies when developing communication strategies to deal with fake news is an important practical contribution.