Tag: Disinformation

Pausing to consider why a headline is true or false can help reduce the sharing of false news

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Author: Fazio, Lisa Description: In an online experiment, participants who paused to explain why a headline was true or false indicated that they were less likely to share false information compared to control participants. Their intention to share accurate news stories was unchanged. These results indicate that adding “friction” (i.e., pausing to think) before sharing can improve the quality of information shared on social media.  Subject headings: Disinformation; Fake news; Psychology; Social media Publication year: 2020 Journal or book title: Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Find…

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Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections

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Author: Supran, G.; Rahmstorf, S.; Oreskes, N. Description: Climate projections by the fossil fuel industry have never been assessed. On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by-and in many cases modeled by-Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp also correctly rejected…

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Weaponized health communication: Twitter bots and Russian trolls amplify the vaccine debate

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Author: Broniatowski, D. A.; Jamison, A. M.; Qi, S.; AlKulaib, L.; Chen, T.; Benton, A.; Quinn, S. C. & Dredze, M. Description: To understand how Twitter bots and trolls (“bots”) promote online health content. We compared bots’ to average users’ rates of vaccine-relevant messages, which we collected online from July 2014 through September 2017. We estimated the likelihood that users were bots, comparing proportions of polarized and antivaccine tweets across user types. We conducted a content analysis of a Twitter hashtag associated with Russian troll activity. Compared with average users,…

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Why do people spread false information online? The effects of message and viewer characteristics on self-reported likelihood of sharing social media disinformation

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Author: Buchanan, T. Description: Individuals who encounter false information on social media may actively spread it further, by sharing or otherwise engaging with it. Much of the spread of disinformation can thus be attributed to human action. Four studies (total N = 2,634) explored the effect of message attributes (authoritativeness of source, consensus indicators), viewer characteristics (digital literacy, personality, and demographic variables) and their interaction (consistency between message and recipient beliefs) on self-reported likelihood of spreading examples of disinformation. Participants also reported whether they had shared real-world disinformation in the…

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Misinformation and morality: Encountering fake-news headlines makes them seem less unethical to publish and share

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Author: Effron, D. A. & Raj, M. Description: People may repeatedly encounter the same misinformation when it “goes viral.” The results of four main experiments (two preregistered) and a pilot experiment (total = 2,587) suggest that repeatedly encountering misinformation makes it seem less unethical to spread-regardless of whether one believes it. Seeing a fake-news headline one or four times reduced how unethical participants thought it was to publish and share that headline when they saw it again-even when it was clearly labeled as false and participants disbelieved it, and even…

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The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions

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Author: Bennett, W. L. & Livingston, S. Description: Many democratic nations are experiencing increased levels of false information circulating through social media and political websites that mimic journalism formats. In many cases, this disinformation is associated with the efforts of movements and parties on the radical right to mobilize supporters against centre parties and the mainstream press that carries their messages. The spread of disinformation can be traced to growing legitimacy problems in many democracies. Declining citizen confidence in institutions undermines the credibility of official information in the news and…

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Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality

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Author: Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G. Description: Reducing the spread of misinformation, especially on social media, is a major challenge. We investigate one potential approach: having social media platform algorithms preferentially display content from news sources that users rate as trustworthy. To do so, we ask whether crowdsourced trust ratings can effectively differentiate more versus less reliable sources. We ran two preregistered experiments ( = 1,010 from Mechanical Turk and = 970 from Lucid) where individuals rated familiarity with, and trust in, 60 news sources from three categories: (…

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The spread of low-credibility content by social bots

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Author: Shao, C.; Ciampaglia, G. L.; Varol, O.; Yang, K.-C.; Flammini, A. & Menczer, F. Description: The massive spread of digital misinformation has been identified as a major threat to democracies. Communication, cognitive, social, and computer scientists are studying the complex causes for the viral diffusion of misinformation, while online platforms are beginning to deploy countermeasures. Little systematic, data-based evidence has been published to guide these efforts. Here we analyze 14 million messages spreading 400 thousand articles on Twitter during ten months in 2016 and 2017. We find evidence that…

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