Can we train people to speak up when they see misinformation on social media?
Most media literacy research efforts focus on training people to identify true from false information. However, learning to recognize accurate information doesn’t automatically help stop inaccurate information from spreading online. Many of us have seen false or misleading content on our feeds, but quickly scroll past it and move on, sometimes deciding that it is not worth engaging with.
Our recent study explores a different approach to media literacy: training people to actively respond to misinformation when they see it online rather than ignoring it. This work focuses on both “social corrections,” which include everyday direct actions such as commenting with accurate information, as well as lower-effort actions such as reporting misleading content.
Study design
We ran an experiment with a group of government analysts who had signed up for a social cybersecurity training program called OMEN. They completed a short, interactive session on how and why to counter misinformation. Before and after the training, participants were shown social media posts explicitly labeled as false and asked if and how they would respond.
They could select one or more of the actions described in the table below. They were also asked whether and how the poster of the post and the platform on which it was posted would influence their response. The goal wasn’t to make these already highly skilled analysts better fact-checkers, but to see whether the training could make them more willing to intervene.