An investigation framed in the Project of Excellence of the Andalusian Research Plan “Impact of the Disinformation in Andalusia: cross-sectional analysis of audiences and journalistic routines and agendas. Desinfoand’ reveals surprising results. were questioned 1,550 Andalusians from 15 years old to study the phenomenon of disinformation in Andalusia. One of the data provided by this survey, carried out in December 2023, is that a 88.3% of citizens think they are coming across fake content but only 68.3% feel able to identify it.
This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers of the Spanish government plans to approve the Action Plan for Democracy and against hoaxes which President Pedro Sánchez had anticipated before the summer and which, he says, hopes to benefit from the support of the PP.
The results of the survey show a “plural” panorama between the different provinces and “a generalized concern”, which is none other than, for 87.3% of Andalusians, the existence of news or information that distorts reality or even that they are false is “a problem for the autonomous community,” as the research group “Desinfoand” states in a press release.
The data shows that there is “a great concern” for the “problem” but “less training to stop it.” The perception is very similar in all provinces, which “demonstrates the extension of the phenomenon in the region,” according to the authors of this work.
So, in Malaga, 14% of citizens admit to having shared false information in the last seven days,almost double the Andalusian average which amounts to 7%. However, Malaga is also a leader in terms of consultation media dedicated to verifying information, with 34.9% of its inhabitants using these tools, while Jaen It is the province that uses them the least, with 15.5%. “This suggests a greater awareness in Malaga of the importance of verifying information,” the researchers add.
The average in the region is 25%, meaning that one in four Andalusians has consulted one of them on one occasion or another. means of verification.Grenade It positions itself as the province with the greatest capacity to identify fake news, with 76.2% of respondents saying they have the capacity to detect disinformation; unlike Jaén, where only 61.4% consider they have this capacity.
The desinfoAND project is led by teachers from University of Malaga Laura Teruel Rodríguez (journalism) and Livia García Faroldi (sociology). It is funded by the Junta de Andalucía through its call for projects of excellence (Feder) and around twenty researchers from the universities of Málaga, Huelva, Seville and Granada from different regions participate.
