The Modality-Congruent Carryover Effect: How Difficulty in Identifying (Deep)Fake News Impacts Self-Confidence in Truth Discernment and Susceptibility to Subsequent Disinformation

With the proliferation of (deep)fake news, individuals will increasingly find it difficult to discern whether content is created by human journalists or artificial intelligence. A two-wave online experiment investigated the carryover effects of news authentication during the initial (deep)fake news exposure on responses to subsequent (deep)fake news. Participants encountered celebrity (deep)fake news in text and video formats on social media. The results showed that the difficulty induced by news authentication lowered self-confidence in truth discernment, which, in turn, decreased the perceived credibility and engagement intentions toward subsequent unrelated fake news of the same modality.