Protecting Free Speech While Countering Misinformation: The Rebuttal Strategy

• In Event: How to Counter Misinformation Online

Abstract

Censorship as a way to protect the integrity of political debate and thwart malign forces has ancient problems. The alternative is to find ways to reconstruct the public sphere in order to curtail the effects of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation. Most fundamentally the strategy should be to give truth (or at least rebuttals) wings equal to the falsehoods they pursue. The starting point for a solution is a new option to tag a news story, webpage, tweet, blog post or a link shared on social media with a ‘rejoinder’ or ‘rebuttal’. This study evaluates the rebuttals proposal as a potential means of reducing the radicalization and polarization engendered by fake news and opinion bubbles on social media using simulations to evaluate the implications of rebuttals for the spread of fake news in an agent-based SIR model. Rebuttals that accompany the misinformation dramatically reduce the spread of misinformation even when the rebuttal is less likely to persuade recipients than the misinformation.

Author

• Jesse T. Richman, Old Dominion University