How Do Fact Checks Operate?: Examining Fact-Check Order, Affect, and Elaboration in Perceptions of Misinformation

• In Event: Misinformation and Correction

Abstract

Journalists have offered fact-checking websites such as Politifact as a solution to “fake news” and political misinformation though empirical evidence for fact-checking effectiveness is mixed, and individual-level cognitive processing factors that might condition fact-checking effectiveness are unclear. This study uses a survey-based experiment of n = 1,177 Amazon Mechanical Turk participants to test how two competing mechanisms—cognitive elaboration and negative affect—may alter how individuals process a fake health news story and its associated fact check under a variety of content-based (i.e., manipulated fake news source) and contextual conditions (i.e., preemptive fact-check or fact check viewed after fake news exposure). Results from a mediated-moderation model show that political fact checks primarily operate through increasing fact-check-related anxiety (an affective mechanism) and not enhancing cognitive elaboration of the story or fact check content (a rational processing mechanism). Implications for fact-checking interventions to blunt the misinformation effects of fake news are discussed.

Authors

• James D. Ponder, Kent State U

• Carrie Winters, Kent State U

• Zachary Humphries, Kent State U

• Michael A. Beam, Kent State U.

• Chance York, Kent State U

• Catherine Elise Goodall, The Ohio State U