(Why) Is Misinformation a Problem?

Considering information-sharing motives to reduce misinformation

Misinformation has risen in recent years, negatively affecting domains ranging from politics to health. To curb the spread of misinformation it is useful to consider why, how, and when people decide to share information. Here we suggest that information-sharing decisions are value-based choices, in which sharers strive to maximize rewards and minimize losses to themselves and/or others. These outcomes can be tangible, in the form of monetary rewards or losses, or intangible, in the form of social feedback. On social media platforms these rewards and losses are not clearly tied to the accuracy of information shared. Thus, sharers have little incentive to avoid disseminating misinformation. Based on this framework, we propose ways to nudge sharers to prioritize accuracy during information-sharing.

The importance of epistemology for the study of misinformation

Scholars have rapidly produced a robust body of literature addressing the public's beliefs in, and interactions with "misinformation." Despite the literature's stated concerns about the underlying truth value of the information and beliefs in question, the field has thus far operated without a reliable epistemology for determining the truth of the information and beliefs in question, often leaving researchers (or third parties) to make such determinations based on loose definitions and a naïve epistemology. We argue that, while this area of research has made great strides in recent years, more attention to definitions, epistemology, and terminology would both improve the validity of the literature and prevent the field of misinformation studies from becoming political conflict by another name.

Teaching epistemic integrity to promote reliable scientific communication

In an age of mass communication, citizens need to learn how to detect and transmit reliable scientific information. This need is exacerbated by the transmission of news through social media, where any individual has the potential to reach thousands of other users. In this article, we argue that fighting the uncontrolled transmission of unreliable information requires improved training in broad epistemic integrity. This subcategory of research integrity is relevant to students in all disciplines, and is often overlooked in integrity courses, in contrast to topics such as fraud, plagiarism, collaboration and respect for study subjects. Teaching epistemic integrity involves training epistemic skills (such as metacognitive competences, capacity to use helpful heuristics, basic statistical and methodological principles) and values (such as love of truth, intellectual humility, epistemic responsibility). We argue that this topic should be addressed in secondary school, and later constitute a fundamental component of any university curriculum.