KU study finds skepticism helps, cynicism fuels misinformation

A University of Kansas study offers Douglas County readers a sharper way to judge bad information: question what you see, but do not slip into assuming everything is false. In a survey of more than 1,000 people, researchers found that greater news knowledge was associated with higher news skepticism and lower news cynicism, while higher cynicism was linked to a greater belief in misinformation about both COVID-19 and politics.

The distinction matters in Lawrence, where school decisions, election claims and health rumors can spread quickly through the same feeds and group chats. KU’s researchers said the study used 2022 survey responses and measured whether people understood how media work, including whether journalists are required to be licensed. It also separated three ideas that often get blurred together: trust, meaning whether media are fair and unbiased; skepticism, meaning thinking about a source before believing it; and cynicism, meaning believing media institutions lie or act as mouthpieces for people in power.

That separation is the point Tamar Wilner has been making in her work at KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Wilner joined the faculty in fall 2024 after a 15-year career as a print and online reporter and editor. Her research focuses on news literacy, media trust and misinformation, and her dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin examined the roles of news skepticism and news cynicism in news literacy education. The KU study reinforces her larger warning that the information environment itself is part of the problem, because people now encounter content that looks newslike even when it comes from social media, rumor or other unverified sources.

That warning lines up with a wider national pattern. Pew Charitable Trusts has said news media, once among the most trusted institutions in the country, now sit near the bottom of many trust rankings, with political polarization, new media platforms and economic disruption all helping drive the shift. Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity reported in 2024 that lower educational levels, lower health literacy and greater medical mistrust were associated with misinformed COVID-19 beliefs, and PolitiFact said COVID-19 misinformation was still circulating four years into the pandemic, moving from early denial and fake cures toward vaccine-focused falsehoods.

For Douglas County, the local lesson is practical. KU’s own public programming on misinformation and disinformation, along with civic-engagement discussions at Lawrence Public Library involving the League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County and Kansas Public Radio, point toward the kind of media literacy that protects public trust without turning skepticism into reflexive distrust.