Examining the Correlation Between Media Multitasking Habits and AI detection Ability in a Social Media Context

Sammanfattning

In recent years more people, especially younger generations, have reported getting more of their daily news consumption from social media. With the rapid development in generative AI tools becoming more available to the public along with the down-scaling of fact checking on several large social media platforms raises the importance of one’s ability to detect AI to avoid generated content and misinformation online, especially in news content. Previous research has sought out which factors that could possibly affect people’s AI detection abilities – this study examines if media multitasking habits could be considered a factor in distinguishing AI-generated text, particularly in news on social media. Knowing what might make us more susceptible to disinformation online is valuable information since the platforms can no longer guarantee that their content is truthful. To conduct this study 20 participants answered a questionnaire regarding their media multitasking habits as well as participated in an AI detection test. Based on the answers in the questionnaire, the participants were divided into two groups and the differences in AI detection for the groups was analyzed. The results suggest that those who execute media multitasking more often are better at detecting AI-generated text than those who do it less often. In conclusion one’s media multitasking habits could possibly affect one’s ability to distinguish AI-generated content, giving further insight into what makes us more susceptible to AI-generated content.