In what is possibly President TrumpвЂ™s most infamous instance of disinformation, he intervened to obtain edited photos of his inauguration, with which he used to claim the crowd to be the biggest in history (Swaine, 2018) вЂ“ despite images posted on Twitter proving otherwise. Despite this, disinformation and rebuttals that combine an image alongside a textual claim have been neglected in extant research. The current online media environment is increasingly multimodal вЂ“ comprising visuals and text (Harcup & OвЂ™Neill, 2017). Against this backdrop, this paper relies on an experimental study in which the effects of multimodal disinformation and rebuttals on the (dis)informationвЂ™s perceived credibility are investigated. As disinformation resembles propaganda in terms of the intended political consequences of the sender, it is crucial to consider the effects of disinformation on the audienceвЂ™s perception of information credibility, and the potential effect of corrective efforts that counter the intentional falsehoods. Disinformation, however, refers to the intentional spread of false information, for example driven by political strategies (Jackson, 2017 Marwick & Lewis, 2017 Weedon, Nuland, & Stamos, 2017). Misinformation can be defined as any type of information that is spread without the intention to mislead (e.g., Wardle, 2017). When studying the consequences of the spread of inaccurate information, disinformation has received markedly little attention in the field of political communication (but see Marwick & Lewis, 2017). In this setting, citizens may not be able to make accurate political decisions as they are increasingly unsure about the veracity of political information.

More specifically, different political and nonpolitical actors can use the affordances of digital media to spread falsehoods across society вЂ“ without the interference of journalistic gatekeepers that verify information. In todayвЂ™s information environment, the function of the media to inform citizens by disseminating truthful information is at risk. The spread of inaccurate information has been regarded as a severe threat to democracy (e.g., Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz, & Cook, 2012). elections, where a large quantity of вЂњnews storiesвЂќ were found to be inaccurate, or flat-out incorrect. The fierce debate on the mediaвЂ™s truthfulness and accuracy has become particularly prominent in the aftermath of the 2016В U.S. In todayвЂ™s fragmented information environment, debates on the truthfulness and honesty of political claims have become more prominent (e.g., van Aelst et al., 2017). We also found that fact checkers can overcome partisan and attitudinal filters вЂ“ which points to the relevance of fact checking as a journalistic discipline. Fact checkers can help to overcome the potential harmful consequences of disinformation. Our findings indicate that, irrespective of the source, multimodal disinformation is considered slightly more credible than textual disinformation.

citizens ( N =В 1,404) to investigate the credibility of textual versus multimodal (text-plus-visual) disinformation, and the effects of textual and multimodal fact checkers in refuting disinformation on school shootings and refugees. Against this backdrop, we conducted an online experiment with a diverse sample of U.S. Although previous research has investigated the effects of misinformation and corrective efforts, we know too little about the role of visuals in disinformation and fact checking. TodayвЂ™s fragmented and digital media environment may create a fertile breeding ground for the uncontrolled spread of disinformation.

How to combine pictures in paint