The Effects of Warning Labels and Social Endorsement Cues on Credibility Perceptions of and Engagement Intentions with Fake News (original) (raw)
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Journal of Media Research
Nowadays controversial stories, conspiracy theories, or false information are massively shared on social media. Fake news is supported by the online environment because it generates traffic and financial benefits (Tandoc et al., 2018). It is a chain — users share the news on their feed, then they receive the same type of content, later on, creating the illusion of veracity through popularity. Media credibility becomes more and more relevant in the context of the proliferation of fake news. The present paper addresses the mediating role of source and message credibility in relationship with the engagement with ‘poor journalistic’ content. We aimed to identify the effects of media reputation and of the facticity of the news on (digital) behavior such as the intent to disseminate or to comment on fake news on social media and also on discussing these contents with friends. For this purpose, we applied a 2x2 between subjects online experiment by manipulating the (1) the source (high vs....
Fake News on Social Media: The (In)Effectiveness of Warning Messages
International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), 2018
Warning messages are being discussed as a possible mechanism to contain the circulation of false information on social media. Their effectiveness for this purpose, however, is unclear. This article describes a survey experiment carried out to test two designs of warning messages: a simple one identical to the one used by Facebook, and a more complex one informed by recent research. We find no evidence that either design is clearly superior to not showing a warning message. This result has serious implications for brands and politicians, who might find false information about them spreading uncontrollably, as well as for managers of social media platforms, who are struggling to find effective means of controlling the diffusion of misinformation.
2021
Using a survey of U.S. adults, this research examines the content, source, and typology cues that people rely on when assessing misinformation in the news, frequently referred to as fake news, and how those factors impact the confidence they have in their ability to identify fake news. Participants’ confidence in recognizing fake news was significantly affected by their patterns of looking at news cues, such as a story’s URL and author, as well as by their engaging in their own research and seeking out news that confirms what they already believe. These findings signal a need for increased, continuous news literacy education designed to empower the public to push back against the seedy allure of fake news and other forms of misinformation that pose as legitimate, objective news.
How People Perceive Influence of Fake News and Why It Matters
Communication Quarterly, 2021
Employing theoretical frameworks regarding people's perception of media effects (e.g. thirdperson effect), this study examines how people perceive the effects of fake news, what may lead to these perceptions, and how people act on them. Findings from an online survey provide evidence that people perceive fake news to have negative influence on themselves and others, with greater influence on others than themselves. This study revealed that the extended internal political efficacy scale-the conventional internal political efficacy scale with a measure specific to fake news-serves as an antecedent of the perceived influence of fake news on oneself, others, and the self-other perceptual disparity. Further, the perceptions of fake news effects on oneself and others, separately and jointly, were significantly associated with several likely behaviors including support for fake news regulation, social media withdrawal, and information sharing on social media.
Nevertheless, partisanship persisted: fake news warnings help briefly, but bias returns with time
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2021
Politically oriented “fake news”—false stories or headlines created to support or attack a political position or person—is increasingly being shared and believed on social media. Many online platforms have taken steps to address this by adding a warning label to articles identified as false, but past research has shown mixed evidence for the effectiveness of such labels, and many prior studies have looked only at either short-term impacts or non-political information. This study tested three versions of fake news labels with 541 online participants in a two-wave study. A warning that came before a false headline was initially very effective in both discouraging belief in false headlines generally and eliminating a partisan congruency effect (the tendency to believe politically congenial information more readily than politically uncongenial information). In the follow-up survey two weeks later, however, we found both high levels of belief in the articles and the re-emergence of a par...
El profesional de la información
The main social media platforms have been implementing strategies to minimize fake news dissemination. These include identifying, labeling, and penalizing –via news feed ranking algorithms– fake publications. Part of the rationale behind this approach is that the negative effects of fake content arise only when social media users are deceived. Once debunked, fake posts and news stories should therefore become harmless. Unfortunately, the literature shows that the effects of misinformation are more complex and tend to persist and even backfire after correction. Furthermore, we still do not know much about how social media users evaluate content that has been fact-checked and flagged as false. More worryingly, previous findings suggest that some people may intentionally share made up news on social media, although their motivations are not fully explained. To better understand users’ interaction with social media content identified or recognized as false, we analyze qualitative and qu...
A Prosocial Fake News Intervention with Durable Effects
In contrast to prior individuum-focused interventions, the online randomized controlled trial presented here motivated young adults through family bonds to build resistance against fake news. This preregistered study is the first psychological fake news intervention in Eastern Europe, where the free press is weak and state-sponsored misinformation runs riot in mainstream media. In this intervention, participants were endowed with an expert role and requested to write a letter to their digitally less competent relatives explaining six strategies that help fake news recognition. Compared to the active control group there was an immediate effect (d=0.32) that persisted until the follow-up four weeks later (d=0.22) on fake news accuracy ratings. The intervention also reduced the bullshit receptivity of participants both immediately after the intervention and in the long run. The present work demonstrates the power of using relevant social bonds for motivating behavior change among Easte...
Computers in Human Behavior, 2021
A growing literature is emerging on the believability and spread of disinformation, such as fake news, over social networks. However, little is known about the degree to which malicious actors can use social media to covertly affect behavior with disinformation. A lab-based randomized controlled experiment was conducted with 233 undergraduate students to investigate the behavioral effects of fake news. It was found that even short (under 5-min) exposure to fake news was able to significantly modify the unconscious behavior of individuals. This paper provides initial evidence that fake news can be used to covertly modify behavior, it argues that current approaches to mitigating fake news, and disinformation in general, are insufficient to protect social media users from this threat, and it highlights the implications of this for democracy. It raises the need for an urgent cross-sectoral effort to investigate, protect against, and mitigate the risks of covert, widespread and decentralized behavior modification over online social networks.
2021
Fake news poses one of the greatest threats to democracy, journalism, and freedom of expression. In recent cases, fake news’ designs are to create confusion and lower trust among the general public—as seen in the 2016 United States presidential campaign and the Brexit referendum. The spread of information without formal verification increased since the introduction of social media and online news channels. After the popularization of fake news, researchers have tried to evaluate and understand the effects of false information from multiple different perspectives. However, it is evident that to tackle the problem of fake news, interdisciplinary collaboration is needed. This article evaluates the main findings of recent literature from an integrated psychological, linguistic, cognitive, and societal perspective, with a particular focus on digital and age-related aspects of fake news. From a psychosociological standpoint, the article provides a synthesized profile of the fake news beli...
"Fake news" may have limited effects beyond increasing beliefs in false claims
Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 2020
Since 2016, there has been an explosion of interest in misinformation and its role in elections. Research by news outlets, government agencies, and academics alike has shown that millions of Americans have been exposed to dubious political news online. However, relatively little research has focused on documenting the effects of consuming this content. Our results suggest that many claims about the effects of exposure to false news may be overstated, or, at the very least, misunderstood. How to cite: Guess, Andrew M.; Lockett, Dominique; Lyons, Benjamin; Montgomery, Jacob M.; Nyhan, Brendan; Reifler, Jason (2020). "Fake news" may have limited effects beyond increasing beliefs in false claims, The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, Research question Does news from untrustworthy websites ("fake news") influence political attitudes and beliefs? What can observational and experimental data tell us about the effects of exposure to this type of content? Essay summary • We examine the connection between the websites people visit or are exposed to and their answers to questions in public opinion surveys about politics. • We analyze these relationships using two types of data: real-world consumption of news from untrustworthy websites and randomized exposure to an article from an untrustworthy website as part of an opinion survey. (We use "consume"/"consumption" and "expose"/"exposure," respectively, to distinguish these approaches.) • Our data come from three nationally representative samples of Americans that we refer to as the summer 2018, fall 2018, and winter 2018 data. These studies included survey questions; observational web traffic data from respondents, which was collected in anonymized form with informed consent; and controlled experiments in which some respondents were shown an article from an untrustworthy website.