Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Uncategorized

Description: Recent research, including our pilot work that informs this proposal, shows that fact-checking efforts and news coverage of misinformation decrease trust in media and scientists. In turn, media literacy courses and general warnings about the presence of fake news may make people critical toward not only misinformation but also factually accurate information. Furthermore, these interventions, which indirectly expose people to misinformation, may have behavioral downstream effects over-time in a feedback loop that generates further exposure to and sharing of (mis)information. We argue that the reason that these interventions to counter misperceptions – fact-checking, media literacy, and media coverage of misinformation - come with negative effects, has to do with the way the message is delivered, as detailed below. Accordingly, this project addresses an overarching question of theoretical and practical importance: How can we improve current interventions to fight misinformation in order to minimize the negative side effects and maximize the public benefits? We offer a comprehensive test of both positive and negative effects of these three interventions in three countries: the United States, Poland and Hong Kong. Also, more importantly, we identify practically applicable ways to prevent the negative effects from emerging. We compare existing delivery strategies of these interventions - i.e. the common approaches to fact-checking, media literacy efforts, and covering misinformation by legacy media - with alternative delivery strategies - i.e. incorporating the necessary adjustments to existing interventions