Older adults habitually encounter misinformation on social media, but there is little knowledge about their experiences with it. In this study, we combined a qualitative survey (n=119) with in-depth interviews (n=21) to investigate how older adults in America conceptualize, discern, and contextualize social media misinformation. As misinformation on social media in the past was driven towards influencing voting outcomes, we were particularly interested to approach our study from a voting intention perspective. We found that 62% of the participants intending to vote Democrat saw a manipulative political purpose behind the spread of misinformation while only 5% of those intending to vote Republican believed misinformation has a political dissent purpose. Regardless of the voting intentions, most participants relied on source heuristics combined with fact-checking to discern truth from misinformation on social media. The biggest concern about the misinformation, among all the participants, was that it increasingly leads to biased reasoning influenced by personal values and feelings instead of reasoning based on objective evidence. The participants intending to vote Democrat were in 74% of the cases concerned that misinformation will cause escalation of extremism in the future, while those intending to vote Republican, were undecided, or planned to abstain were concerned that misinformation will further erode the trust in democratic institutions, specifically in the context of public health and free and fair elections. During our interviews, we found that 63% of the participants who intended to vote Republican, were fully aware and acknowledged that Republican or conservative voices often time speak misinformation, even though they are closely aligned to their political ideology.

翻译：老年人在社交媒体上经常遭遇虚假信息，但学界对其相关体验知之甚少。本研究结合定性问卷（n=119）和深度访谈（n=21），探究美国老年人如何概念化、辨别并情境化社交媒体虚假信息。由于过去社交媒体上的虚假信息旨在影响投票结果，我们特别从投票意向的视角展开研究。结果发现，62% 打算投票给民主党的参与者认为虚假信息传播背后存在操纵性政治目的，而仅有5% 打算投票给共和党的参与者认为虚假信息具有政治异议意图。无论投票意向如何，多数参与者依赖来源启发式与事实核查相结合的方法，在社交媒体上辨别真伪。所有参与者对虚假信息最大的担忧在于：它日益导致基于个人价值观和情感的偏颇推理，而非基于客观证据的理性判断。74% 的民主投票意向者担忧虚假信息未来会加剧极端主义，而共和投票意向者、未决定者或计划弃权者则担忧虚假信息将进一步侵蚀公众对民主制度（尤其是在公共卫生及自由公正选举领域）的信任。访谈中发现，63% 的共和投票意向者充分意识到并承认，共和党或保守派声音尽管与其政治立场高度契合，却时常散布虚假信息。