Twitter users mainly distrust the narratives offered by Russian mainstream media, write Irina Khaldarova and Mervi Pantti, of University of Helsinki. The authors analysed 6043 Twitter messages which referred back to the ten most popular Russian news stories declared fake by the Ukrainian fact-checking website StopFake.org.

Just over half (50.7 per cent) of the analyzed messages were openly distrustful of the news, the authors noted. While only 11.2 per cent were trustful of the stories, over one third (36.4 per cent) of the messages were neutral. The attitude of a small fraction (1.5 per cent) could not be verified.

The study Fake News was published by the journal Journalism Practice. It is available online (abstract free).

Picture: Untitled by jlaswilson, licence CC0 1.0.