Choi, S. (2026). The modality-congruent carryover effect: How difficulty in identifying (deep)fake news impacts self-confidence in truth discernment and susceptibility to subsequent disinformation. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990251413726
Summary
This paper investigates how the experience of trying to authenticate one piece of (deep)fake news shapes a person’s response to later disinformation. Using a two-wave online experiment, Choi shows that the difficulty encountered when attempting to judge the authenticity of celebrity fake news carries over to affect both self-confidence in truth discernment and susceptibility to subsequent fake content. The central conceptual move is the proposal of a modality-congruent carryover effect: the difficulty experienced with one format (text or video) shapes reactions to later fake news presented in that same format, rather than transferring across modalities. This reframes disinformation susceptibility as a sequential, cumulative phenomenon rather than a series of isolated single-exposure judgments.
Key Contributions
- Introduces the concept of a modality-congruent carryover effect in the processing of (deep)fake news.
- Provides experimental evidence linking authentication experience with one piece of fake content to vulnerability toward subsequent fake content.
- Extends disinformation research by modeling sequential exposure dynamics rather than treating exposures as independent.
- Identifies modality (text vs. video) as a moderating factor in cumulative disinformation susceptibility.
Methods
A two-wave online experiment with temporal separation between an initial and a subsequent (deep)fake news exposure. News modality was manipulated, presenting celebrity (deep)fake news in both text and video formats within a social media context. The study measured authentication difficulty, self-confidence in truth discernment, and susceptibility to the later (deep)fake stimulus, allowing the author to trace how the first experience conditioned responses to the second.
Findings
- Difficulty induced during initial authentication carried over to influence responses to subsequent fake content.
- These carryover effects were modality-congruent — occurring when the initial and subsequent fake news shared the same format (text-to-text or video-to-video).
- Authentication difficulty affected both self-confidence in truth-discernment ability and susceptibility to later disinformation.
Connections
This work sits alongside experimental studies of individual-level susceptibility and resistance to AI-generated and deceptive content, notably inoculation and persuasion research such as van-der-Linden2026-jt and Hackenburg2025-dj. Its focus on deepfakes and the cognitive/metacognitive challenge of distinguishing synthetic media connects to broader treatments of generative-AI disinformation like Spampatti2026-kx and Di-Domenico2026-zq. The emphasis on sequential, cumulative exposure dynamics offers a complementary lens to the largely single-exposure or macro-level framings elsewhere in these topics.