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Navigating the complexity of visual misinformation: Developing the Visual Misinformation Processing Model for visual-text misinformation dynamics

Jiyoung Lee & Jiyoun Suk

Communication Theory2025https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaf011article
ABDC A
Weight
0.41

What the paper says

In the current media landscape, misinformation has evolved into a multimodal challenge, presenting misinformation through various modalities simultaneously, particularly through text and visuals. Despite increasing scholarly attention to visual misinformation, as one type of multimodal misinformation, there is a lack of a unified theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive processes involved in how people process visual misinformation and become susceptible to it. In this paper, we introduce a psychological processing model—the Visual Misinformation Processing Model (VMPM)—to bridge this gap. This model outlines four key cognitive stages: (1) encountering visual misinformation; (2) allocating attention to visuals; (3) engaging in dominant processing of visuals alongside text; and (4) becoming persuaded by misinformation. We discuss the current state of research on visual misinformation and suggest directions for future research.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaf011

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@article{jiyoung2025,
  title        = {{Navigating the complexity of visual misinformation: Developing the Visual Misinformation Processing Model for visual-text misinformation dynamics}},
  author       = {Jiyoung Lee & Jiyoun Suk},
  journal      = {Communication Theory},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaf011},
}

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Evidence weight

0.41

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.25 × 0.4 = 0.10
M · momentum0.55 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.