Disinformation has become a primary tool through which populist authoritarian political actors build and sustain their rule. Populist disinformation fosters hatred against minority groups and political opponents, particularly by disseminating de-contextualized, misleading, or fabricated news. Scholars in political communication have shown that citizens with lower trust in political institutions and media are particularly susceptible to populist disinformation. Beyond this, are there personality traits that influence who is more likely to believe in populist disinformation? Guided by this question, our project investigates the role of epistemic virtues and vices in determining susceptibility to populist disinformation. Epistemic virtues are character traits that aid our pursuit of truth, knowledge, and understanding, while epistemic vices obstruct them. Specifically, we are interested in the roles of intellectual humility, rigidity, and closed-mindedness.
Our project relies on two different surveys conducted in Turkey. Under Erdogan’s populist authoritarian rule, the Turkish public has been exposed to increasing levels of populist disinformation spread by the vast network of state-controlled media channels. Populist disinformation has helped Erdogan to sustain his public support despite growing policy crises in the country. We test whether belief in Erdogan’s disinformation narratives is associated with epistemic vices and virtues while also controlling for the effects of cognitive reflection skills, literacy, and various other political variables. Our findings offer a new perspective to think about the power and limitations of populist disinformation, as well as the ways to fight it. This is also the first project, to the best of our knowledge, bringing epistemic vices to the study of authoritarian disinformation.
