Book contents
- Seeing Is Disbelieving
- Seeing Is Disbelieving
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 A Theory of People’s Factual Beliefs and Credulity in War
- 3 Factual Misperceptions in the US Drone Campaign in Pakistan
- 4 Proximity to the Fighting and the Puncturing of Factual Bias in Iraq
- 5 Truth Discernment and Personal Exposure in the Syrian Civil War
- 6 Understanding and Mitigating the Appeal of Falsehood in Wartime
- Appendix
- References
- Index
5 - Truth Discernment and Personal Exposure in the Syrian Civil War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: aN Invalid Date NaN
- Seeing Is Disbelieving
- Seeing Is Disbelieving
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 A Theory of People’s Factual Beliefs and Credulity in War
- 3 Factual Misperceptions in the US Drone Campaign in Pakistan
- 4 Proximity to the Fighting and the Puncturing of Factual Bias in Iraq
- 5 Truth Discernment and Personal Exposure in the Syrian Civil War
- 6 Understanding and Mitigating the Appeal of Falsehood in Wartime
- Appendix
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter investigates how civilians sort truth from lies in the context of the Syrian civil war. In particular, it plumbs a rich batch of semi-structured interviews conducted with Syrian refugees in Turkey that was generously shared by Schon (2020). These interviews include people’s confidence in their truth discernment ability – their ability to distinguish true vs. false information – during the war, along with detailed information on what they heard and experienced while they were in Syria. The chapter analyzes these interviews with a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analyses show that those who spent longer in Syria, witnessed a wider range of events in the war, and explicitly rely on personal experience to assess new information are much more confident in their truth discernment ability. This is supported by ample qualitative material from the interviews, which demonstrates how Syrian refugees put stock in many of these same factors and drew many of these same connections themselves when discussing informational dynamics in the war.
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- Seeing Is DisbelievingWhy People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better, pp. 105 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024