Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news

Human trafficking and the growing malady of disinformation

Disinformation has endangered the most vulnerable communities within our world. The anti-trafficking movement in particular has been adversely impacted by disinformation tactics advanced through the QAnon campaign. QAnon's extremist messaging exacerbates gendered, racist, and xenophobic manifestations of trafficking victimization as well as problematic responses to trafficking that underpin historic structural inequities built into the United States' response to trafficking. We describe an overview of mechanisms used by the QAnon campaign to spread disinformation and illustrate how these mechanisms adversely affect the anti-trafficking movement. Given the critical role of healthcare providers in both the identification and connection to care for trafficked persons, as well as their susceptibility to disinformation, we provide several recommendations for the health sector to leverage their educational and advocacy power to combat trafficking disinformation while addressing the root causes of human trafficking.

Social Media News Use and COVID-19 Misinformation Engagement: Survey Study

BACKGROUND

Social media is widely used as a source of news and information regarding COVID-19. However, the abundance of misinformation on social media platforms has raised concerns regarding the spreading infodemic. Accordingly, many have questioned the utility and impact of social media news use on users' engagement with (mis)information.

OBJECTIVE

This study offers a conceptual framework for how social media news use influences COVID-19 misinformation engagement. More specifically, we examined how news consumption on social media leads to COVID-19 misinformation sharing by inducing belief in such misinformation. We further explored if the effects of social media news use on COVID-19 misinformation engagement depend on individual differences in cognition and personality traits.

METHODS

We used data from an online survey panel administered by a survey agency (Qualtrics) in Singapore. The survey was conducted in March 2022, and 500 respondents answered the survey. All participants were older than 21 years and provided consent before taking part in the study. We used linear regression, mediation, and moderated mediation analyses to explore the proposed relationships between social media news use, cognitive ability, personality traits, and COVID-19 misinformation belief and sharing intentions.

RESULTS

The results suggested that those who frequently used social media for news consumption were more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation and share it on social media. Further probing the mechanism suggested that social media news use translated into sharing intent via the perceived accuracy of misinformation. Simply put, social media news users shared COVID-19 misinformation because they believed it to be accurate. We also found that those with high levels of extraversion than those with low levels were more likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate and share it. Those with high levels of neuroticism and openness than those with low levels were also likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate. Finally, it was observed that personality traits did not significantly influence misinformation sharing at higher levels of cognitive ability, but low cognitive users largely drove misinformation sharing across personality traits.

CONCLUSIONS

The reliance on social media platforms for news consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified, with dire consequences for misinformation sharing. This study shows that increased social media news consumption is associated with believing and sharing COVID-19 misinformation, with low cognitive users being the most vulnerable. We offer recommendations to newsmakers, social media moderators, and policymakers toward efforts in limiting COVID-19 misinformation propagation and safeguarding citizens.

"Hey Alexa, what do you know about the COVID-19 vaccine?"- (Mis)perceptions of mass immunization and voice assistants

In this paper, we analyzed the perceived accuracy of COVID-19 vaccine information spoken back by Amazon Alexa. Unlike social media, Amazon Alexa does not apply soft moderation to unverified content, allowing for use of third-party malicious skills to arbitrarily phrase COVID-19 vaccine information. The results from a 210-participant study suggest that a third-party malicious skill could successful reduce the perceived accuracy among the users of information as to who gets the vaccine first, vaccine testing, and the side effects of the vaccine. We also found that the vaccine-hesitant participants are drawn to pessimistically rephrased Alexa responses focused on the downsides of the mass immunization. We discuss solutions for soft moderation against misperception-inducing or other malicious third-party skills.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Social Media Following Extreme Events

With the increased use of social media in crisis communication following extreme events, it is important to understand how the public distinguishes between true and false information. A U.S. adult sample (N = 588) was presented 20 actual social media posts following a natural disaster or soft-target terrorist attack in the United States. In this study, social media posts are conceptualized as truth signals with varying strengths, either above or below each individual's threshold for believing the post is true. Optimally, thresholds should be contingent on the (incentivized) error penalties and base-rate of true posts, both of which were manipulated. Separate receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses indicate that participants performed slightly better than chance for natural disasters and moderately better than chance for terror attacks. While the pooled thresholds are ordinally consistent with the base-rate and error penalty manipulations, they are underadjusted compared to the optimal thresholds. After accounting for demographic and cognitive variables, the base-rate manipulation significantly predicted sensitivity, specificity, and true response rates in the expected direction for both content domains, while the error penalty manipulation had no significant effect in either domain. Self-identified political conservatives performed worse at classifying false content as false for natural disasters, but better for terror attacks.

Impact of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation on Social Media Virality: Content Analysis of Message Themes and Writing Strategies

BACKGROUND

Vaccines serve an integral role in containing pandemics, yet vaccine hesitancy is prevalent globally. One key reason for this hesitancy is the pervasiveness of misinformation on social media. Although considerable research attention has been drawn to how exposure to misinformation is closely associated with vaccine hesitancy, little scholarly attention has been given to the investigation or robust theorizing of the various content themes pertaining to antivaccine misinformation about COVID-19 and the writing strategies in which these content themes are manifested. Virality of such content on social media exhibited in the form of comments, shares, and reactions has practical implications for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

OBJECTIVE

We investigated whether there were differences in the content themes and writing strategies used to disseminate antivaccine misinformation about COVID-19 and their impact on virality on social media.

METHODS

We constructed an antivaccine misinformation database from major social media platforms during September 2019-August 2021 to examine how misinformation exhibited in the form of content themes and how these themes manifested in writing were associated with virality in terms of likes, comments, and shares. Antivaccine misinformation was retrieved from two globally leading and widely cited fake news databases, COVID Global Misinformation Dashboard and International Fact-Checking Network Corona Virus Facts Alliance Database, which aim to track and debunk COVID-19 misinformation. We primarily focused on 140 Facebook posts, since most antivaccine misinformation posts on COVID-19 were found on Facebook. We then employed quantitative content analysis to examine the content themes (ie, safety concerns, conspiracy theories, efficacy concerns) and manifestation strategies of misinformation (ie, mimicking of news and scientific reports in terms of the format and language features, use of a conversational style, use of amplification) in these posts and their association with virality of misinformation in the form of likes, comments, and shares.

RESULTS

Our study revealed that safety concern was the most prominent content theme and a negative predictor of likes and shares. Regarding the writing strategies manifested in content themes, a conversational style and mimicking of news and scientific reports via the format and language features were frequently employed in COVID-19 antivaccine misinformation, with the latter being a positive predictor of likes.

CONCLUSIONS

This study contributes to a richer research-informed understanding of which concerns about content theme and manifestation strategy need to be countered on antivaccine misinformation circulating on social media so that accurate information on COVID-19 vaccines can be disseminated to the public, ultimately reducing vaccine hesitancy. The liking of COVID-19 antivaccine posts that employ language features to mimic news or scientific reports is perturbing since a large audience can be reached on social media, potentially exacerbating the spread of misinformation and hampering global efforts to combat the virus.

Fake news: Why do we believe it?

Fake news dissemination has increased greatly in recent years, with peaks during the US presidential elections and the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has addressed fake news creation, consumption, sharing, and detection as well as approaches to counteract it and prevent people from believing it. This update addresses only a part of the fake news-related issues and focuses on determinants leading individuals to believe fake news, noting that rheumatology is scarcely represented. Some determinants relate to the ecosystem of media and social networks, such as the availability and rapid spread of fake news, the unselected information on platforms and the fact that consumers can become creators of fake news. Cognitive factors are important, such as confirmation bias, political partisanship, prior exposure and intuitive thinking. Low science knowledge and low educational level are also involved. Psychological factors include attraction to novelty, high emotional state, and the emotionally evocative content of fake news. High digital literacy protects against believing fake news. Sociological factors such as online communities, or echo chambers, and the role of pressure groups have been identified. The implication for practice can be deduced, including education in media literacy and warning tips, reliable journalism and fact-checking, social media regulation, partnership of media platforms' with fact-checkers, warning messages on networks, and digital detection solutions. Health professionals need to better understand the factors that cause individuals to believe fake news. Identifying these determinants may help them in their counseling role when talking to patients about misinformation.

The social media effect: the impact of fake news on women affected by endometriosis. A prospective observational study

OBJECTIVES

Our purpose was to evaluate women's awareness of endometriosis and their ability to identify fake news about endometriosis on the internet. The second outcome was to identify those characteristics which make women more likely to believe in fake news.

STUDY DESIGN

This prospective observational study was conducted at our academic outpatient clinic for endometriosis and pelvic pain. We enrolled 172 patients referred to our Center due to the suspicion of endometriosis, who were asked to fill in a two-part questionnaire. The first part included socio-demographic information, the evaluation of anxiety status (STAI Y6 and GAD-7), and endometriosis related-symptoms (EHP-5). The second part of the questionnaire was about fake news: women were asked whether they had encountered six different statings when searching the Internet, and to judge the likelihood that those 6 topics were true.

RESULTS

76.3% of patients found fake news about endometriosis online. Higher STAI-Y6 scores were associated with a higher risk of finding fake news about endometriosis (OR 1.05, 95% C.I. 1.01-1.09, p = 0.013). More than half of patients who came across the news regarding the impossibility of obtaining pregnancy for women affected by endometriosis considered this news moderately or highly credible, 6% of them even considered it completely plausible. No demographic characteristics were associated with thehigher perceived plausibility of the fake news.

CONCLUSION

Gynecologists should be aware that some hot topics concerning endometriosis are widely talked about on the web and that many statements found online have no scientific base. Through this knowledge physicians could more easily engage patients by acquiring important insight into their main concerns and doubts, and could provide women with reliable and correct information regarding their disease, dissipating doubts and misconceptions.

Research on the Intervention and Prevention of College Students' Mental Health Crisis From the Perspective of Ideological and Physical Education

Present study has aimed to understand the intervention and prevention of the mental health crisis of college students. For this purpose, this study has checked the effect of trust in wellbeing information on preventive behavior and mental wellbeing. The target population taken for this study is the students of colleges situated in Mainland in China. The data was collected from the 458 students of the college. Smart PLS has been employed on the data to get the results using partial least square structural equation modeling. For this purpose, the data were analyzed in two stages, i.e., measurement model stage and the structural model stage. Results of this study have revealed that trust in wellbeing information plays a significant and positive role in setting preventive behavior and the mental wellbeing of students. Further, it has also been revealed that preventive behavior also plays a significant and positive role in mental wellbeing. Additionally, preventive behavior has been found as an important mediating variable among the relationship of trust in wellbeing information and mental wellbeing. Moreover, family support is crucial by positively moderating the relationship between preventive behavior and mental wellbeing. Many practical implications have been found among which the foremost is that the education institutes must undertake those efforts that aim to ensure the fairness in the information spread regarding the mental wellbeing during seminars, workshops and administration should play a positive role responsible for strengthening the mental health of students by managing ideas, improving student education management, innovating management techniques and methods.

Fake News Incidents through the Lens of the DCAM Disinformation Blueprint

The emergence of the Internet and web technologies has magnified the occurrence of disinformation events and the dissemination of online fake news items. Fake news is a phenomenon where fake news stories are created and propagated online. Such events occur with ever increasing frequency, they reach a wide audience, and they can have serious real-life consequences. As a result, disinformation events are raising critical public interest concerns as in many cases online news stories of fake and disturbing events have been perceived as being truthful. However, even at a conceptual level, there is not a comprehensive approach to what constitutes fake news with regard to the further classification of individual occurrences and the detection/mitigation of actions. This work identifies the emergent properties and entities involved in fake news incidents and constructs a disinformation blueprint (DCAM-DB) based on cybercrime incident architecture. To construct the DCAM-DB in an articulate manner, the authors present an overview of the properties and entities involved in fake news and disinformation events based on the relevant literature and identify the most prevalent challenges. This work aspires to enable system implementations towards the detection, classification, assessment, and mitigation of disinformation events and to provide a foundation for further quantitative and longitudinal research on detection strategies.

A reproducible systematic map of research on the illusory truth effect

People believe information more if they have encountered it before, a finding known as the illusory truth effect. But what is the evidence for the generality and pervasiveness of the illusory truth effect? Our preregistered systematic map describes the existing knowledge base and objectively assesses the quality, completeness and interpretability of the evidence provided by empirical studies in the literature. A systematic search of 16 bibliographic and grey literature databases identified 93 reports with a total of 181 eligible studies. All studies were conducted at Western universities, and most used convenience samples. Most studies used verbatim repetition of trivia statements in a single testing session with a minimal delay between exposure and test. The exposure tasks, filler tasks and truth measures varied substantially across studies, with no standardisation of materials or procedures. Many reports lacked transparency, both in terms of open science practices and reporting of descriptive statistics and exclusions. Systematic mapping resulted in a searchable database of illusory truth effect studies ( https://osf.io/37xma/ ). Key limitations of the current literature include the need for greater diversity of materials as stimuli (e.g., political or health contents), more participants from non-Western countries, studies examining effects of multiple repetitions and longer intersession intervals, and closer examination of the dependency of effects on the choice of exposure task and truth measure. These gaps could be investigated using carefully designed multi-lab studies. With a lack of external replications, preregistrations, data and code, verifying replicability and robustness is only possible for a small number of studies.

The ‘Fauci Effect’: Reducing COVID-19 Misconceptions and Vaccine Hesitancy Using an Authentic Multimodal Intervention

Social media environments enable users to proliferate misinformation surrounding COVID-19. Expert sources, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci have leveraged social media to present corrective multimedia messages. However, little is known about the efficacy of these messages in revising common misconceptions about COVID-19 and influencing behavior. In this study, we examined the efficacy of a multimodal intervention using authentic social media messages that directly addressed common COVID-19 misconceptions. Going further, we identified individual differences that influenced the effectiveness of the intervention, as well as whether those factors predicted individuals’ willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The results showed that the intervention was successful in increasing knowledge when compared to a baseline control. Those who were older and reported less vaccine hesitancy showed greater learning from the intervention. Factors that significantly predicted intention to vaccinate included receiving the intervention, vaccine confidence, vaccine hesitancy, prior flu vaccination history, age, and fear of COVID-19. These findings indicate that multimodal messages can be effectively leveraged in social media to both fight misinformation and increase intention to be vaccinated - however, these interventions may not be as effective for all individuals.

When Does an Individual Accept Misinformation? An Extended Investigation Through Cognitive Modeling

A new phenomenon is the spread and acceptance of misinformation and disinformation on an individual user level, facilitated by social media such as Twitter. So far, state-of-the-art socio-psychological theories and cognitive models focus on explaining how the accuracy of fake news is judged on average, with little consideration of the individual. In this paper, a breadth of core models are comparatively assessed on their predictive accuracy for the individual decision maker, i.e., how well can models predict an individual's decision before the decision is made. To conduct this analysis, it requires the raw responses of each individual and the implementation and adaption of theories to predict the individual's response. Building on methods formerly applied on smaller and more limited datasets, we used three previously collected large datasets with a total of 3794 participants and searched for, analyzed and refined existing classical and heuristic modeling approaches. The results suggest that classical reasoning, sentiment analysis models and heuristic approaches can best predict the "Accept" or "Reject" response of a person, headed by a model put together from research by Jay Van Bavel, while other models such as an implementation of "motivated reasoning" performed worse. Further, hybrid models that combine pairs of individual models achieve a significant increase in performance, pointing to an adaptive toolbox.

Understanding the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on social media: The effects of topics and a political leader's nudge

The spread of misinformation on social media has become a major societal issue during recent years. In this work, we used the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to systematically investigate factors associated with the spread of multi-topic misinformation related to one event on social media based on the heuristic-systematic model. Among factors related to systematic processing of information, we discovered that the topics of a misinformation story matter, with conspiracy theories being the most likely to be retweeted. As for factors related to heuristic processing of information, such as when citizens look up to their leaders during such a crisis, our results demonstrated that behaviors of a political leader, former US President Donald J. Trump, may have nudged people's sharing of COVID-19 misinformation. Outcomes of this study help social media platform and users better understand and prevent the spread of misinformation on social media.

Susceptibility to misinformation is consistent across question framings and response modes and better explained by myside bias and partisanship than analytical thinking

Misinformation presents a significant societal problem. To measure individuals’ susceptibility to misinformation and study its predictors, researchers have used a broad variety of ad-hoc item sets, scales, question framings, and response modes. Because of this variety, it remains unknown whether results from different studies can be compared (e.g., in meta-analyses). In this preregistered study (US sample; N = 2,622), we compare five commonly used question framings (eliciting perceived headline accuracy, manipulativeness, reliability, trustworthiness, and whether a headline is real or fake) and three response modes (binary, 6-point and 7-point scales), using the psychometrically validated Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST). We test 1) whether different question framings and response modes yield similar responses for the same item set, 2) whether people’s confidence in their primary judgments is affected by question framings and response modes, and 3) which key psychological factors (myside bias, political partisanship, cognitive reflection, and numeracy skills) best predict misinformation susceptibility across assessment methods. Different response modes and question framings yield similar (but not identical) responses for both primary ratings and confidence judgments. We also find a similar nomological net across conditions, suggesting cross-study comparability. Finally, myside bias and political conservatism were strongly positively correlated with misinformation susceptibility, whereas numeracy skills and especially cognitive reflection were less important (although we note potential ceiling effects for numeracy). We thus find more support for an “integrative” account than a “classical reasoning” account of misinformation belief.

Technique-based inoculation against real-world misinformation

In recent years, numerous psychological interventions have been developed to reduce susceptibility to misinformation. Inoculation theory has become an increasingly common framework for reducing susceptibility to both individual examples of misinformation (issue-based inoculation) and to the techniques and strategies that are commonly used to mislead or misinform people (technique-based inoculation). In this study, we address two open questions related to technique-based inoculation in two separate experiments (total n = 2188; convenience sample recruited via the Bad News online game platform): (i) can technique-based inoculation effectively reduce susceptibility to real-world misinformation that went viral on social media? and (ii) can technique-based inoculation confer cross-protection against misinformation that does not make use of any of the techniques against which people were inoculated? We find that playing a 15 min game confers psychological resistance against real-world misinformation that makes use of manipulation techniques against which people were inoculated (Cohen's d = 0.37, Cohen's U ₃ = 64.4%, p < 0.001), and that cross-protection is achieved but at a reduced effect size (d = 0.10, U ₃ = 54.0%, p = 0.001).

Technique-based inoculation against real-world misinformation

In recent years, numerous psychological interventions have been developed to reduce susceptibility to misinformation. Inoculation theory has become an increasingly common framework for reducing susceptibility to both individual examples of misinformation (issue-based inoculation) and to the techniques and strategies that are commonly used to mislead or misinform people (technique-based inoculation). In this study, we address two open questions related to technique-based inoculation in two separate experiments (total n = 2188; convenience sample recruited via the Bad News online game platform): (i) can technique-based inoculation effectively reduce susceptibility to real-world misinformation that went viral on social media? and (ii) can technique-based inoculation confer cross-protection against misinformation that does not make use of any of the techniques against which people were inoculated? We find that playing a 15 min game confers psychological resistance against real-world misinformation that makes use of manipulation techniques against which people were inoculated (Cohen's d = 0.37, Cohen's U 3 = 64.4%, p < 0.001), and that cross-protection is achieved but at a reduced effect size (d = 0.10, U 3 = 54.0%, p = 0.001).

Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation

Interventions that shift users attention toward the concept of accuracy represent a promising approach for reducing misinformation sharing online. We assess the replicability and generalizability of this accuracy prompt effect by meta-analyzing 20 experiments (with a total N = 26,863) completed by our group between 2017 and 2020. This internal meta-analysis includes all relevant studies regardless of outcome and uses identical analyses across all studies. Overall, accuracy prompts increased the quality of news that people share (sharing discernment) relative to control, primarily by reducing sharing intentions for false headlines by 10% relative to control in these studies. The magnitude of the effect did not significantly differ by content of headlines (politics compared with COVID-19 related news) and did not significantly decay over successive trials. The effect was not robustly moderated by gender, race, political ideology, education, or value explicitly placed on accuracy, but was significantly larger for older, more reflective, and more attentive participants. This internal meta-analysis demonstrates the replicability and generalizability of the accuracy prompt effect on sharing discernment.

Perceiving ingroup and outgroup faces within and across nations

The human face is arguably the most important of all social stimuli because it provides so much valuable information about others. Therefore, one critical factor for successful social communication is the ability to process faces. In general, a wide body of social cognitive research has demonstrated that perceivers are better at extracting information from their own-race compared to other-race faces and that these differences can be a barrier to positive cross-race relationships. The primary objective of the present paper was to provide an overview of how people process faces in diverse contexts, focusing on racial ingroup and outgroup members within one nation and across nations. To achieve this goal, we first broadly describe social cognitive research on categorization processes related to ingroups vs. outgroups. Next, we briefly examine two prominent mechanisms (experience and motivation) that have been used to explain differences in recognizing facial identities and identifying emotions when processing ingroup and outgroup racial faces within nations. Then, we explore research in this domain across nations and cultural explanations, such as norms and practices, that supplement the two proposed mechanisms. Finally, we propose future cross-cultural research that has the potential to help us better understand the role of these key mechanisms in processing ingroup and outgroup faces.

Health Misinformation Across Multiple Digital Ecologies: Qualitative Study of Data from Interviews With International Students (Preprint)

Background

Transient migrants such as international students have received limited support from host country governments throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. An increase in misinformation, resulting in poor health outcomes for individuals, may impact an already vulnerable group.

Objective

Existing research examines the spread of misinformation. Similarly, there is extensive literature on the health information behavior of international students. However, there is a gap in the literature focusing on international students’ interaction with health misinformation. This exploratory research aims to address this gap by examining international students’ interaction with health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

A total of 11 participants took part in semistructured interviews and a health misinformation-identification exercise via Zoom. The data collected were subjected to qualitative thematic analysis. Multiple rounds of coding, checked by other coders, revealed 2 themes and 6 subthemes.

Results

The 2 main themes that emerged were (1) approaches to dealing with health misinformation and (2) how international students navigate across multiple digital ecologies. Results show that international students who draw on multiple digital ecologies for information reliably identify misinformation, suggesting that the use of multiple digital ecologies may have a protective effect against health misinformation.

Conclusions

Findings show that international students encounter health misinformation across multiple digital ecologies, and they also compare information across multiple ecologies. This comparison may support them in identifying health misinformation. Thus, the findings of this study combat narratives of international students’ susceptibility to misinformation.

Understanding the “infodemic”: social media news use, homogeneous online discussion, self-perceived media literacy and misperceptions about COVID-19

Purpose

This study has three main purposes: (1) to investigate the association between social media news use and misperceptions about COVID-19; (2) to explore the mediating role of homogeneous online discussion; (3) and to understand whether the extent to which one perceives themselves as media-literate could moderate the relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted an online survey and collected data through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of 797 participants aged 18 and above completed the survey. The average age of the respondents is 38.40 years (SD = 12.31), and 41.2% were female. In terms of party identification, 30.8% were reported leaning toward Republicans; 53.7% leaned toward Democrats, and 15.4% were reported neutral.

Findings

Results from a moderated mediation model show that social media news use is positively associated with misperceptions about the COVID-19. Moreover, homogeneous online discussion was a significant mediator of the relationship between social media news use and misperceptions about COVID-19. Further, self-perceived media literacy (SPML) significantly moderated the main and indirect effects between social media news use and COVID-19 misperceptions, such that the associations became weaker among those with higher SPML.

Originality/value

Findings provide insights into the significance of online information sources, discussion network heterogeneity and media literacy education. Although there have been many studies on misinformation, prior research has not examined these relationships, which may help provide solutions to cope with misinformation.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2021-0305

Misinformation: susceptibility, spread, and interventions to immunize the public

The spread of misinformation poses a considerable threat to public health and the successful management of a global pandemic. For example, studies find that exposure to misinformation can undermine vaccination uptake and compliance with public-health guidelines. As research on the science of misinformation is rapidly emerging, this conceptual Review summarizes what we know along three key dimensions of the infodemic: susceptibility, spread, and immunization. Extant research is evaluated on the questions of why (some) people are (more) susceptible to misinformation, how misinformation spreads in online social networks, and which interventions can help to boost psychological immunity to misinformation. Implications for managing the infodemic are discussed.

Adolescents’ Vulnerability to Fake News and to Racial Hoaxes: A Qualitative Analysis on Italian Sample

Following the Digital Revolution, we are witnessing an increase in the number of manipulated sources of information. For this reason, virtual environments can be a breeding ground for the proliferation of prejudices and stereotypes, resulting from the spread of racial fallacious news, known as ‘racial hoaxes’. Adolescents may be more susceptible due to the tense and complicated relationship between their experience with digital platforms and the development of their relatively limited critical thinking. In this landscape, in order to explore the features of disinformation in adolescence, the research involved 41 Italian adolescents between 13 and 16 years old, balanced by gender and school education. The teenagers took part in the focus group discussions on the topic of online information preferences, fake news and racial hoaxes, which were analyzed by means of content analysis. The answers given by participants show a so-called adolescents’ perception of ‘misinformation invulnerability’ that can influence their credulity in fake news, since they are aware of fake news but they are not so able to recognize or remember it.

Americans' Perspectives on Online Media Warning Labels

Americans are pervasively exposed to social media, news, and online content. Some of this content is designed to be deliberately deceptive and manipulative. However, it is interspersed amongst other content from friends and family, advertising, and legitimate news. Filtering content violates key societal values of freedom of expression and inquiry. Taking no action, though, leaves users at the mercy of individuals and groups who seek to use both single articles and complex patterns of content to manipulate how Americans consume, act, work, and even think. Warning labels, which do not block content but instead aid the user in making informed consumption decisions, have been proposed as a potential solution to this dilemma. Ideally, they would respect the autonomy of users to determine what media they consume while combating intentional deception and manipulation through its identification to the user. This paper considers the perception of Americans regarding the use of warning labels to alert users to potentially deceptive content. It presents the results of a population representative national study and analysis of perceptions in terms of key demographics.

Is Earth a perfect square? Repetition increases the perceived truth of highly implausible statements

A single exposure to statements is typically enough to increase their perceived truth. This Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect has long been assumed to occur only with statements whose truth value is unknown to participants. Contrary to this hypothesis, recent research has found that statements contradicting participants' prior knowledge (as established from a first sample of participants) show a TBR effect following their repetition (in a second, independent sample of participants). As for now, however, attempts at finding a TBR effect for blatantly false (i.e., highly implausible) statements have failed. Here, we reasoned that highly implausible statements such as Elephants run faster than cheetahs may show repetition effects, provided a sensitive truth measure is used and statements are repeated more than just once. In a preregistered experiment, participants judged on a 100-point scale the truth of highly implausible statements that were either new to them or had been presented five times before judgment. We observed an effect of repetition: repeated statements were judged more true than new ones, although all judgments were judged below the scale midpoint. Exploratory analyses additionally show that about half the participants showed no or even a reversed effect of repetition. The results provide the first empirical evidence that repetition can increase perceived truth even for highly implausible statements, although not equally so for all participants and not to the point of making the statements look true.

The ephemeral effects of fact-checks on COVID-19 misperceptions in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Widespread misperceptions about COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus threaten to exacerbate the severity of the pandemic. We conducted preregistered survey experiments in the United States, Great Britain and Canada examining the effectiveness of fact-checks that seek to correct these false or unsupported beliefs. Across three countries with differing levels of political conflict over the pandemic response, we demonstrate that fact-checks reduce targeted misperceptions, especially among the groups who are most vulnerable to these claims, and have minimal spillover effects on the accuracy of related beliefs. However, these reductions in COVID-19 misperception beliefs do not persist over time in panel data even after repeated exposure. These results suggest that fact-checks can successfully change the COVID-19 beliefs of the people who would benefit from them most but that their effects are ephemeral.

A Signal Detection Approach to Understanding the Identification of Fake News

Researchers across many disciplines seek to understand how misinformation spreads with a view toward limiting its impact. One important question in this research is how people determine whether a given piece of news is real or fake. In the current article, we discuss the value of signal detection theory (SDT) in disentangling two distinct aspects in the identification of fake news: (a) ability to accurately distinguish between real news and fake news and (b) response biases to judge news as real or fake regardless of news veracity. The value of SDT for understanding the determinants of fake-news beliefs is illustrated with reanalyses of existing data sets, providing more nuanced insights into how partisan bias, cognitive reflection, and prior exposure influence the identification of fake news. Implications of SDT for the use of source-related information in the identification of fake news, interventions to improve people's skills in detecting fake news, and the debunking of misinformation are discussed.

Monetary incentives do not reduce the repetition-induced truth effect

People rate and judge repeated information more true than novel information. This truth-by-repetition effect is of relevance for explaining belief in fake news, conspiracy theories, or misinformation effects. To ascertain whether increased motivation could reduce this effect, we tested the influence of monetary incentives on participants’ truth judgments. We used a standard truth paradigm, consisting of a presentation and judgment phase with factually true and false information, and incentivized every truth judgment. Monetary incentives may influence truth judgments in two ways. First, participants may rely more on relevant knowledge, leading to better discrimination between true and false statements. Second, participants may rely less on repetition, leading to a lower bias to respond “true.” We tested these predictions in a preregistered and high-powered experiment. However, incentives did not influence the percentage of “true” judgments or correct responses in general, despite participants’ longer response times in the incentivized conditions and evidence for knowledge about the statements. Our findings show that even monetary consequences do not protect against the truth-by-repetition effect, further substantiating its robustness and relevance and highlighting its potential hazardous effects when used in purposeful misinformation.

Factors Influencing Willingness to Share Health Misinformation Videos on the Internet: Web-Based Survey

BACKGROUND

The rapidly evolving digital environment of the social media era has increased the reach of both quality health information and misinformation. Platforms such as YouTube enable easy sharing of attractive, if not always evidence-based, videos with large personal networks and the public. Although much research has focused on characterizing health misinformation on the internet, it has not sufficiently focused on describing and measuring individuals' information competencies that build resilience.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to assess individuals' willingness to share a non-evidence-based YouTube video about strengthening the immune system; to describe types of evidence that individuals view as supportive of the claim by the video; and to relate information-sharing behavior to several information competencies, namely, information literacy, science literacy, knowledge of the immune system, interpersonal trust, and trust in health authority.

METHODS

A web-based survey methodology with 150 individuals across the United States was used. Participants were asked to watch a YouTube excerpt from a morning TV show featuring a wellness pharmacy representative promoting an immunity-boosting dietary supplement produced by his company; answer questions about the video and report whether they would share it with a cousin who was frequently sick; and complete instruments pertaining to the information competencies outlined in the objectives.

RESULTS

Most participants (105/150, 70%) said that they would share the video with their cousins. Their confidence in the supplement would be further boosted by a friend's recommendations, positive reviews on a crowdsourcing website, and statements of uncited effectiveness studies on the producer's website. Although all information literacy competencies analyzed in this study had a statistically significant relationship with the outcome, each competency was also highly correlated with the others. Information literacy and interpersonal trust independently predicted the largest amount of variance in the intention to share the video (17% and 16%, respectively). Interpersonal trust was negatively related to the willingness to share the video. Science literacy explained 7% of the variance.

CONCLUSIONS

People are vulnerable to web-based misinformation and are likely to propagate it on the internet. Information literacy and science literacy are associated with less vulnerability to misinformation and a lower propensity to spread it. Of the two, information literacy holds a greater promise as an intervention target. Understanding the role of different kinds of trust in information sharing merits further research.

Linguistic drivers of misinformation diffusion on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retweets. In particular, the presence of misinformation plays an interesting role in spreading the tweet on the network. More importantly, the relative influence of the cues suggests that Twitter users actually read a tweet but not necessarily they understand or critically evaluate it before deciding to share it on the social media platform.

Exploring factors that mitigate the continued influence of misinformation

Background

The term “continued influence effect” (CIE) refers to the phenomenon that discredited and obsolete information continues to affect behavior and beliefs. The practical relevance of this work is particularly apparent as we confront fake news everyday. Thus, an important question becomes, how can we mitigate the continued influence of misinformation? Decades of research have identified several factors that contribute to the CIE reduction, but few have reported successful elimination. Across three studies, we evaluated the relative contribution of three factors (i.e., targeting the misinformation, providing an alternative explanation, and relative importance of the misinformation content) to the reduction of the CIE.

Results

Across three studies and two different CIE measures, we found that alternative provision consistently resulted in CIE reduction. Furthermore, under certain conditions, the combination of alternative inclusion and direct targeting of misinformation in the correction statement resulted in successful elimination of the CIE, such that individuals who encountered that type of correction behaved similarly to baseline participants who never encountered the (mis)information. In contrast, under one CIE measure, participants who received correction statements that failed to include those elements referenced the (mis)information as frequently as baseline participants who never encountered a correction. Finally, we delineated several component processes involved in misinformation outdating and found that the extent of outdating success varied as a function of the causality of misinformation.

Conclusions

The damaging effects of fake news are undeniable, and the negative consequences are exacerbated in the digital age. Our results contribute to our understanding of how fake news persists and how we may begin to mitigate their effects.

Emotions explain differences in the diffusion of true vs. false social media rumors

False rumors (often termed "fake news") on social media pose a significant threat to modern societies. However, potential reasons for the widespread diffusion of false rumors have been underexplored. In this work, we analyze whether sentiment words, as well as different emotional words, in social media content explain differences in the spread of true vs. false rumors. For this purpose, we collected [Formula: see text] rumor cascades from Twitter, comprising more than 4.5 million retweets that have been fact-checked for veracity. We then categorized the language in social media content to (1) sentiment (i.e., positive vs. negative) and (2) eight basic emotions (i. e., anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, trust, sadness, and surprise). We find that sentiment and basic emotions explain differences in the structural properties of true vs. false rumor cascades. False rumors (as compared to true rumors) are more likely to go viral if they convey a higher proportion of terms associated with a positive sentiment. Further, false rumors are viral when embedding emotional words classified as trust, anticipation, or anger. All else being equal, false rumors conveying one standard deviation more positive sentiment have a 37.58% longer lifetime and reach 61.44% more users. Our findings offer insights into how true vs. false rumors spread and highlight the importance of managing emotions in social media content.