Even though I am a big fan of MythBusters, I
had a really hard time coming up with an experiment or quasi-experiment idea
for this week’s blogging question. Then, I remembered one thing that has been
making me laugh in the past few months: le Journal de Mourréal. As some of you
may know, there is a Journal de Montréal, which is one of the most read
newspapers by francophones in Quebec. A couple of months ago, I started seeing
news articles appearing on my Facebook feed, which I thought were pretty
unbelievable (in the literally “unlikely” sense of the word). However, people
were commenting on these news articles like they were true and the comments
actually made me doubt my incredulity… until I opened of these articles and saw
that they were written by the Journal of Mourréal instead of Montréal… since
both websites are very similar (most probably a conscious choice by the Journal
de Mourréal), I am going to say that it is possible to be mislead… yet, when
you actually read the article (or sometimes even only the title), you quickly
realize that is is completely satirical. And that made me wonder: why are
people so easily convinced that this is the truth? (You would have to read the
comment threads on these articles; some people have real debates and become
really upset!)
So even if this experiment is somewhat
already happening, I would like to actually statistically know how many people
believe these news are true and what made them think they were? However, I am
still uncertain about how I would go about make this quasi-experiment happen. I
guess my independent variable would be the satirical news article, the
dependent variable would be people’s reaction to the article or their belief or
disbelief in the news and the controlled variable could be the subject of the
news article, for example politics? Anyone has a thought on this one?
I think this quasi-experiment would actually
be a great one to do: as, it may reveal some underlying elements regarding the
critical thinking people give to news.
Journal de Mourréal website (sorry, it is
only in French):
Journal de Montréal website:
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