Addressing Misinformation in Media and Its Impact on Older Adults

There has been a general death of empirical study into the proclivity of the elderly to believe or proliferate ‘fake news.’ The scholarly effort to investigate the impact of ‘fake news’ on old adults internationally has also been minimal. However, from the existing research, there is a general consensus that old adults are major targets of misinformation, and play a major role in sharing it via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. When such a politically powerful, yet vulnerable constituency has been consistently the unwitting target of misinformation campaigns, it is worth wondering first, why old adults are more susceptible to believing ‘fake news,’ and second, why they share it at disproportionate rates.

Arjun Mazumdar (Project Lead), Sarah Ben-Yosef, Arnav Brahmasandra, Elena Gill, Adam Jensen, Ndidi Opara, Victor Qian, and Becca Sealy