Politics as Usual: Online Political Disinformation Sharing among Bangkokians

This note presents preliminary results of research seeking to understand the dynamics of political disinformation by means of a quasi-experimental survey of some 1,500 eligible voters residing in Bangkok, Thailand. The results show that positive psychological engagement and partisanship, particularly among those at the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum, are the key factors that drive individuals to share political disinformation online. They indicate that partisan polarization—a scenario thought to be exclusive to strong, two-party systems—can have a discernible impact on the tendency of a person to share false information even in multiparty systems in which parties lack clearly distinguishable policy platforms.