Understanding the United States Republicans’ Susceptibility to Political Misinformation

Political misinformation is a danger to society, and echo chambers exacerbate the spread and exposure to misinformation, creating harms as severe as those associated with the January 6 US insurrection. Thus, it is important to understand who is most susceptible to believing it. The current study builds on previous work from Rhodes (Polit. Commun. Commun. 39(1), 1–22 (2021) [3]) and aims to explore whether certain groups within the US Republican Party are more susceptible to believing political misinformation than other groups within the Republican Party. Findings indicate that Republicans who identify as having a ‘strong’ political affiliation are significantly more likely to believe political misinformation than those Republicans who identify as having a ‘not very strong’ political affiliation. While Rhodes (Polit. Commun. Commun. 39(1), 1–22 (2021) [3]) found that echo chambers did not impact the entirety of Republicans in their sample, the current study examined whether echo chambers interacted significantly with the strength of political affiliation. However, no significant interaction was found, indicating that echo chambers impacted neither ‘strong’ Republicans nor ‘not very strong’ Republicans. The results provide implications for which groups of people are most susceptible to believing political misinformation and should be the priority in directing ways to mitigate their believability.