I’ve just read the results of an interesting new study on the effect of red-flagging some information on social media, with flags such as “Multiple fact-checking journalists dispute the credibility of this news”, and variations with “Multiple fact-checking journalists” replaced by, alternatively, “Major news outlets”, “A majority of Americans”, or “Computer algorithms using AI”. The researchers tested the effect this had on the propensity of people to share the content. The effect of the “fact-checking” phrasing was the most pronounced, and very significant (a reduction of about 40% of the probability to share content; which jumps to 60% for people who identify as Democrats). Overall the effect of the “AI” phrasing was also very significant, but quite counterintuitively it has the effect of increasing the probability of sharing content for people who identify as Republicans! (By about 8%; it decreases that same probability by 40% for people who identify as Democrats.) https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/researchers-find-red-flagging-misinformation-could-slow-spread-fake-news-social-media
I’ve just read the results of an interesting new study on the effect of red-flagging some information on social media, with flags such as “Multiple fact-checking journalists dispute the credibility of this news”, and variations with “Multiple fact-checking journalists” replaced by, alternatively, “Major news outlets”, “A majority of Americans”, or “Computer algorithms using AI”. The researchers tested the effect this had on the propensity of people to share the content. The effect of the “fact-checking” phrasing was the most pronounced, and very significant (a reduction of about 40% of the probability to share content; which jumps to 60% for people who identify as Democrats). Overall the effect of the “AI” phrasing was also very significant, but quite counterintuitively it has the effect of increasing the probability of sharing content for people who identify as Republicans! (By about 8%; it decreases that same probability by 40% for people who identify as Democrats.)
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/researchers-find-red-flagging-misinformation-could-slow-spread-fake-news-social-media