Perceptions of misinformation salience: a cross-country comparison of estimations of misinformation prevalence and third-person perceptions

Against the backdrop of mounting concerns about misinformation's destabilizing impact paired with growing distrust in established news, this study explores how people estimate misinformation salience in their news environment when engaging in comparative risk assessment with other countries. The study derives from two opposite lines of reasoning on risk perceptions: While research indicating the relative scarcity of misinformation might imply an overestimation of its significance within people's own information environments, the literature on third-person perceptions could counteract this perspective, suggesting a tendency toward underestimating the relative personal risk of misinformation exposure. A survey in seven countries (N = 2,979; the USA, the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Poland, India) showed how perceptions of misinformation salience are not characterized by a systematic underestimation of relative personal risks, but rather reflect a general concern regarding news landscapes being undermined by misinformation. These findings highlight the importance of understanding and studying how audiences themselves make sense of misinformation salience, as these perceptions determine how people navigate a news environment that is perceived to be disrupted by the omnipresence of misinformation.