[ti:Americans Agree Misinformation Is a Problem]
[by:www.21voa.com]
[00:00.00]更多听力请访问21VOA.COM
[00:00.04]A new public opinion study
[00:02.36]suggests a big majority of Americans
[00:05.68]believe that the spread of misinformation is a problem.
[00:11.48]Most also think social media companies,
[00:14.76]and the people who use them, are largely to blame.
[00:20.00]But fewer think that they themselves might be responsible.
[00:26.12]These findings came in a poll released Friday by the Pearson Institute
[00:31.88]and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
[00:38.80]In the study, 95 percent of Americans
[00:42.72]said misinformation was a problem
[00:45.56]when trying to find important information.
[00:49.72]About half put a lot of blame on the U.S. government.
[00:54.64]And about 75 percent said social media users
[00:59.92]and technology companies were responsible.
[01:05.56]Only two in 10 Americans said they are very concerned
[01:10.80]that they had personally spread misinformation.
[01:14.96]And six in 10 were at least somewhat concerned
[01:19.24]that their friends or family member
[01:21.96]had been part of the problem.
[01:26.00]Carmen Speller is a 33-year-old
[01:28.80]graduate student in Lexington, Kentucky.
[01:32.72]She has disagreements with her family
[01:35.84]over COVID-19 vaccines.
[01:39.40]She trusts the vaccines but her family does not.
[01:43.48]She believes her family has seen misinformation on TV
[01:48.84]or read it on news websites
[01:51.56]and that has led them to stay unvaccinated.
[01:56.08]Some of Speller's family members think she is crazy
[02:00.12]for trusting the government for information about COVID-19.
[02:06.32]"I do feel like they believe I'm misinformed.
[02:10.92]I'm the one that's blindly following what the government is saying,
[02:15.16]that's something I hear a lot," Speller said.
[02:20.68]Speller is not the only one
[02:22.56]who may be having disagreements with her family.
[02:27.32]The study suggests that 61 percent of Republican Party members
[02:32.64]say the U.S. government has a lot of responsibility
[02:36.88]for spreading misinformation.
[02:39.92]Thirty-eight percent of Democratic Party members
[02:43.12]feel the same way.
[02:46.48]There is more agreement, however,
[02:49.08]about the part that social media companies,
[02:51.92]including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, should play.
[02:56.96]The poll found that 79 percent of Republicans
[03:01.32]and 73 percent of Democrats said social media companies
[03:06.64]hold a lot of responsibility for misinformation.
[03:12.76]That kind of agreement among Americans
[03:16.12]could be a problem for big social media companies like Facebook.
[03:22.80]Facebook has recently faced a lot of criticism
[03:26.32]from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
[03:32.20]Konstantin Sonin is a professor of public policy
[03:36.52]at the University of Chicago.
[03:39.80]He works with the Pearson Institute.
[03:43.04]Sonin said the poll is bad news for Facebook.
[03:49.24]"It makes clear that assaulting Facebook
[03:52.24]is popular by a large margin
[03:55.00]— even when Congress is split 50-50,
[03:58.80]and each side has its own reasons," he said.
[04:04.16]The poll also suggested that Americans are willing to blame others
[04:09.32]but not themselves for the situation.
[04:13.16]Fifty-three percent of them said
[04:15.56]they are not concerned that they have spread misinformation.
[04:21.24]"We see this a lot of times where people are very worried
[04:24.92]about misinformation but they think it's something that
[04:28.48]happens to other people — other people get fooled by it,
[04:32.60]other people spread it," said Lisa Fazio.
[04:37.40]She is a Vanderbilt University psychology professor.
[04:42.64]Fazio studies how false claims spread.
[04:46.16]"Most people don't recognize their own role in it," she said.
[04:53.52]I'm Dan Novak. 更多听力请访问21VOA.COM