The Effect of Platform Use on Truth Discernment

• In Event: Combating Misinformation and Fake News

Abstract

Growing research has focused on misinformation as part of a broader understanding of information quality and the political information environment in which the United States (and much of the world) now functions.
Part of this emphasis is on truth discernment – the general ability, not just to identify false information as such, but also to appropriately label true information as accurate (Ali, et al., 2022; Epstein, et al., 2021; Rosenzweig, et al., 2021). Both aspects of truth discernment are required for a functioning democracy – people must know whether the information to which they’re exposed is trustworthy or not.
Truth discernment has been shown to relate to sharing intentions on social media (Epstein, et al., 2021), emotions (Rosenzweig, et al., 2021), and cognitive reflection.
But we don’t know a lot about what else helps people to tell truth from fiction. One possible culprit is social media use. Different platforms have different affordances, which might promote greater or less discernment of the content shared within them (Evans, et al., 2017; Rice, et al., 2017; Ronzhyn, et al., 2022). We also consider related variables, including age, interest in politics, and partisanship – which might relate to both the choice of social media platform and the ability to tell true from false information.
To answer these questions, an omnibus survey was administered online via Qualtrics. The date range for the responses are July 27 through August 2, 2022. The overall survey included 1,631 respondents, though only 329 answered the relevant truth discernment questions. Respondents were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
The analysis utilizes the Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST) to determine the ability of the respondents to differentiate misinformation from real headlines (Maertens et al., 2021). Respondents were given eight headlines (half true, half false), absent any indication of media outlet or other source, and asked to classify each as either real or fake news.
Results indicate that discernment is less than would be normatively ideal – only 26% of respondents successfully identified all true headlines as true and all false headlines as false. Almost a quarter of respondents correctly identified less than half of the headlines.
Platform choice, however, seems to have little effect on truth discernment, especially once age and partisanship are taken into effect. This connects our findings to other recent scholarship that demonstrates the difficulty in pinning normatively undesirable outcomes solely on platforms (Haidt & Bail, n.d).
These preliminary findings are discussed in light of the broader information ecology, and implications for political knowledge and political behavior are discussed.

Ali, A., & Qazi, I. A. (2022). Cognitive reflection is associated with greater truth discernment for COVID-19 headlines, less trust but greater use of formal information sources, and greater willingness to pay for masks among social media users in Pakistan. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.
Platform choice, however, seems to have has little effect on truth discernment, especially once age and partisanship are taken into effect. This connects our findings to other recent scholarship that demonstrates the difficulty in pinning normatively undesirable outcomes solely on platforms (Haidt & Bail, n.d).
Epstein, Z., Sirlin, N., Arechar, A. A., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. (2021). Social media sharing reduces truth discernment.
Evans, S. K., Pearce, K. E., Vitak, J., & Treem, J. W. (2017). Explicating affordances: A conceptual framework for understanding affordances in communication research. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 22(1), 35-52.
Haidt, J., & Bail, C. (ongoing). Social media and political dysfunction: A collaborative review. Unpublished manuscript, New York University.Maertens, R., Götz, F., Schneider, C. R., Roozenbeek, J., Kerr, J. R., Stieger, S., Iii, W. P. M., Drabot, K., & Linden, D. S. van der. (2021). The Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST): A psychometrically validated measure of news veracity discernment. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gk68h
Rice, Ronald E., Sandra K. Evans, Katy E. Pearce, Anu Sivunen, Jessica Vitak, and Jeffrey W. Treem. "Organizational media affordances: Operationalization and associations with media use." Journal of Communication 67, no. 1 (2017): 106-130.
Ronzhyn, A., Cardenal, A. S., & Batlle Rubio, A. (2022). Defining affordances in social media research: A literature review. New Media & Society, 146144482211351. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221135187
Rosenzweig, L. R., Bago, B., Berinsky, A. J., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Happiness and surprise are associated with worse truth discernment of COVID-19 headlines among social media users in Nigeria. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.

Authors

• Benjamin Burnley, Colorado State University

• Leticia Bode, Georgetown University