{nomultithumb}Efforts to combat misinformation may inadvertently contribute to increasing citizens' distrust of all media messages, including reliable ones. These conclusions come from an article published in "Nature Human Behavior." The co-authors of the article are Prof. Tomasz Gackowski, Head of the Media Studies Research Lab at the Faculty of Journalism, Information, and Book Studies at the University of Warsaw, and Prof. Magdalena Wojcieszak from the Center of Excellence in Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw, a recipient of ERC grants (Starting Grant and Consolidator) and Red Giant under the Excellence Initiative - Research University program.
An international team of researchers decided to examine anti-misinformation strategies using the examples of Poland, the United States, and Hong Kong. Among the analyzed actions, special attention was paid to fact-checking, education in critical media use, and publicizing instances of false information dissemination. Although these methods effectively reduce the credibility of false messages, researchers believe they gradually lead to a loss of trust in all media among citizens. The solution to this problem would be to design new, improved strategies.
Research has shown that few people actually encounter false information in their daily lives. Nevertheless, concerns about the damage "fake news" can cause have increased in recent years. Significant events, such as the Capitol riots, vaccination hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, have fueled these concerns. Meanwhile, fact-checking initiatives are thriving. Major news platforms like BBC and CNN have incorporated fact-checking into their regular offerings, and there are more and more programs aimed at educating the public on how to distinguish truth from falsehood in the media.
Distrust in Media
Researchers conducted three online survey experiments with 6,127 participants in the USA, Poland, and Hong Kong to test the effectiveness of three anti-misinformation strategies: fact-checking, media literacy initiatives, and targeted media reports. The idea of redesigned strategies was to promote a critical, but not overly skeptical, approach to information. For example, instead of focusing on whether news is true or false, one of the redesigned strategies emphasized understanding political biases in specific media reports.
The study found that traditional tools, as well as alternative myth-debunking strategies, generate broader public doubt, even towards reliable information. It should be noted that the redesigned strategies were not significantly better than traditional methods in building citizens' skills to distinguish fact from fiction.
The analysis results also show that frequently drawing citizens' attention to the presence of false information in the media can paradoxically cause them to approach every piece of news, even true ones, with skepticism. Sometimes the effectiveness of a given strategy depends on the context. For example, frequent fact-checking in American media discourse promotes the ability to distinguish false from reliable information. In Poland, however, media exposure of false information seems to discourage people from practicing this skill.
According to the researchers, a complete turn away from reliable sources of information can pose a threat to democracy. Their proposed new methods of combating misinformation are therefore aimed at limiting the decline in trust in the media while maintaining a critical approach to false information. This includes signaling to the audience that misinformation is not widespread, thus encouraging them to continue seeking verified sources of information. "In today's world, shaken by many crises (from the coronavirus pandemic to the economic crisis to the war in Ukraine), the modern citizen - media user faces many difficulties in their daily 'media diet.' In an era of rapidly developing technologies, such as artificial intelligence or the robotization of more and more areas of socio-economic life, with new phenomena and effects such as deepfake, it is easy to become a victim of a lie, or even an object, a tool of misinformation in someone else's hands. It seems that the third decade of the 21st century will pass under the banner of education for good information - this is a task for universities, but also for regulators and large corporations," argues Prof. Tomasz Gackowski from the University of Warsaw.
As the authors of the article argue, methods of combating misinformation must be continuously improved not only by researchers but also by teachers, journalists, and politicians who have a direct impact on responsible information use. This is because each intervention related to the appearance of false information can reinforce people's discouragement from the media.
The research findings were published in "Nature Human Behavior."
The research involved Prof. Tomasz Gackowski from the Faculty of Journalism, Information, and Book Studies at the University of Warsaw, and Prof. Magdalena Wojcieszak from the University of California, Davis, implementing an ERC Consolidator Grant at the University of Warsaw. The researcher will carry out the project "Incentivizing Citizen Exposure to Quality News Online: Framework and Tools" (NEWSUSE). This project involves applying a model of factors influencing the consumption of information content published online. Prof. Wojcieszak intends to develop, among other things, computational tools supporting the study of interpersonal, social, and algorithmic interactions in this process. Areas of content exploitation and the political context of online news consumption will also be considered.
Publication details:
Emma Hoes, Brian Aitken, Jingwen Zhang, Tomasz Gackowski, and Magdalena Wojcieszak. Prominent Misinformation Interventions Reduce Misperceptions but Increase Skepticism. Nature Human Behaviour. 10 June 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01884-x