School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts

The sharing of biased information has become an increasingly pervasive issue. This is quite dangerous considering how the exchange of information can influence perceptions, decision-making, and, most importantly, how well we coexist. Accordingly, as our access to information and interactions grow in the wake of the digital age, we must reestablish control for how information is shared and increase accountability for those sharing information. Unfortunately, this is seemingly impossible given the scale of interactions and the complexity of information passed around. Thus, researchers in an experiment by Westmark et al., suggest that gauging people’s ability to detect biased information at the lower group level is where to start to accomplish these initiatives. The present work is an exploratory data analysis of the results from a survey deployed during this experiment, which was used to assess participants’ ability to detect bias correctly. The analysis was designed to provide researchers with different perspectives of the original hypothesis to consider. Although no significant relationships were found, comparisons based on gender and party affiliation displayed interesting information about how well these groups deal with the media information they receive and pass on to others.