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Can We Inoculate Citizens Against Fake News?

Fri, August 31, 10:00 to 11:30am, Marriott, Salon I

Abstract

During the 2016 American presidential election, many fake news stories circulated (Allcott & Gentzkow 2016; Nyhan et al 2018), fueling fears that citizens would make judgments based on inaccurate information found in fake news stories. These fears were well founded. Empirical research suggests that citizens believe inaccurate information and use that inaccurate information when making political judgments (Gaines et al 2007, Hochschild & Einstein 2015). To combat fake news, nonprofit organizations, governments, and school districts designed and implemented information literacy campaigns to improve citizens’ ability to differentiate real news from fake. Yet while research explores the characteristics of information consumption among those best evaluate the accuracy of news stories (Caulfield 2017; Wineburg & McGrew 2017), little research examines the effectiveness of various strategies taught as party of information literacy campaigns. The proposed paper explores the effectiveness of five of these strategies on subjects’ ability to differentiate accurate from inaccurate information: teaching individuals to check for fact-checks of the story, trace the source of information, read laterally (checking other sources’ evaluations of the story’s source), recognize the emotions they feel in response to the story, and identify common structural characteristics of fake news stories. Results indicate that teaching individuals some of these strategies will be more successful in preventing the spread of fake news than others.

To test the effectiveness of information literacy campaign techniques, I conducted two separate experiments. The first was an online experiment administered to a national sample through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The second was administered to undergraduate students on two campuses, one in the northeast and another in the southeast. Experimental subjects viewed one of six power point presentations. Five of the presentations outlined one of the five information literacy techniques described above. Each of the presentations ran approximately five minutes, included narration, and provided subjects with examples of implementing each technique. The sixth presentation runs for approximately the same amount of time, but covers a topic unrelated to information literacy. After viewing the presentations, subjects answered a battery of questions about socio-demographic, news consumption, personality and political attitudes toward government and media institutions. Following these questions, individuals evaluated eight different news stories. Four of these stories were fake news stories. Three of the stories involved fake news stories that would appeal to Republicans and three to Democrats. Two of these partisan fake news stories involved a derogatory statement misattributed to a politician of the opposite party, two a positive endorsement for a member of the same party that was never made, and two that mischaracterized an issue central to a party’s agenda. The remaining two stories covered less partisan/politicized issues. Subjects then rated the accuracy of the stories on a five-point scale and assessed their confidence in the ratings provided.

Findings indicate that the five components of information literacy campaign examined vary in effectiveness. Individuals taught to read laterally and trace the source of a story perform better at identifying fake news stories than individuals in the control group. Individuals taught to check for fact-checks of stories, recognize their initial emotional responses, or identify common structural characteristics of fake news stories did not show improvement in their ability to identify fake news. The strongest effects emerged for less partisan fake news stories, although effects still emerged for more partisan fake news stories.

The effectiveness of reading laterally and evaluating a story’s source are somewhat attenuated, but not negated, among certain groups. They are slightly less successful among strong partisans. Both also worked better for individuals higher on certain personality traits, including open-mindedness.

Organizations from nation states to school districts are increasingly designing campaigns aimed at improving citizens’ ability to differentiate between real and fake news, seeking to increase the quality of citizens’ judgements. Unfortunately, little research tests that efficacy of these campaigns. This paper undertakes such tests, indicating that teaching people to identify the source of stories and to check the credibility of those sources positively affects their ability to correctly identify fake news. These effects hold even when stories are highly partisan or those exposed to the information literacy campaigns are themselves strong partisans. These results suggest a way that we could improve the effectiveness of information literacy campaigns and, consequently, decrease the ill effects of fake news on citizens' judgements.

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