{"id":3024,"date":"2017-01-23T21:13:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T21:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/fake-news-power-to-influence-shrinks-with-a-contextual-warning-study-finds.html"},"modified":"2017-01-23T21:13:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T21:13:46","slug":"fake-news-power-to-influence-shrinks-with-a-contextual-warning-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/fake-news-power-to-influence-shrinks-with-a-contextual-warning-study-finds.html","title":{"rendered":"Fake news\u2019 power to influence shrinks with a contextual warning, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Research<\/a> conducted by social psychologists at Cambridge University in the UK, and Yale and George Mason in the US, offers\u00a0a potential\u00a0strategy\u00a0for mitigating the\u00a0spread of misinformation\u00a0online \u2014\u00a0involving the use of pro-active warnings designed to contextualize and pre-expose web users\u00a0to related but fake information in order to debunk factual distortion in advance.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that combining\u00a0facts about climate change with a small dose of misinformation \u2014 in the form of\u00a0a warning about potential distortion \u2014 helped study participants resist the influence of the false information.<\/p>\n

This could be either a general warning, i.e. about the risk of skewed data on the topic, or a warning that debunked a specific climate science\u00a0myth in more detail \u2014 although\u00a0the researchers found that the more detailed warning was about twice as\u00a0effective as the general warning at shifting opinion towards acceptance of climate science consensus despite exposure to fake news. Warnings were presented first.<\/p>\n

Conversely, when false information when presented alongside truth \u2014 i.e. without the added context of the warnings \u2014 they found it weakened people\u2019s belief in the veracity of climate science, with climate myths effectively negating climate facts.<\/p>\n

False information presented\u00a0on its own was also\u00a0shown to have\u00a0a\u00a0potent effect at spreading doubt about the veracity of the\u00a0overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.<\/p>\n

Inoculating against misinformation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The researchers characterize their strategy to mitigate\u00a0the potency of misinformation to influence opinion as akin to a medical inoculation, whereby a small amount of a virus\u00a0can be used to bolster immune resistance to an illness ahead of time, before a\u00a0person encounters the virus in the wild.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn medicine we can try to build resistance to infections by injecting people with a weakened strain of the virus or small dose of the virus that will trigger antibodies in people\u2019s immune system to confer resistance. The attitudinal theory of inoculation is exactly the same \u2014 in the sense that what we try to do is pre-expose people to a bit of the misinformation\u2026 then debunk that information with specific facts,\u201d explains\u00a0lead author of the study, Dr Sander van der Linden, in an interview with TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis process helps arm people with what I call a cognitive repertoire to resist basically future encounters with misinformation. That\u2019s the basic idea\u2026 We see that we can incrementally protect people\u2019s beliefs about science, through inoculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public opinion dynamics research, which\u00a0was\u00a0conducted more than a year ago\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and\u00a0published today in the journal of Global Challenges<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0is especially timely, given ongoing debate around the role social media platforms are playing in\u00a0spreading fake news and other misinformation.<\/p>\n

Facebook, for example, has increasingly found itself in the firing line<\/a> over the veracity of content shared across its network \u2014 not least because the company initially refused to accept any editorial responsibility for the views being distributed via its technology (last month\u00a0CEO Mark\u00a0Zuckerberg finally conceded<\/a>\u00a0the social media giant\u00a0has a \u201cgreater responsibility than just building technology that information flows through\u201d).<\/p>\n

It\u00a0is\u00a0currently\u00a0testing measures to mitigate the power\u00a0of misinformation to influence its users<\/a>\u00a0(in the US, and in Germany<\/a>) \u2014 including by labelling suspect links with warnings about\u00a0the veracity of the content. Facebook\u00a0relies on user reports and\u00a0outside fact-checking organizations to flag\/identify disputed\/dubious content.<\/p>\n

The research, while\u00a0not affiliated with Facebook in any way,\u00a0suggests the company\u2019s\u00a0approach to fighting the potency\u00a0of fake news on its platform could be effective in helping boost users\u2019\u00a0ability to more critically weigh content they are being exposed to via\u00a0Facebook\u2019s algorithmically driven News Feed.<\/p>\n

Although the study\u00a0is focused on opinions around a single topic (climate science consensus),\u00a0van der Linden believes the same strategy of prefixing contentious content with contextual warnings to bolster resistance to fake news could be far more widely applicable, as a way to mitigate the power of misinformation to gather momentum online.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did this over a year ago \u2014 in fact when fake news wasn\u2019t as big of a story as it is now, but climate change has always been a contentious issue \u2014 but yes, I would say this is very generally applicable, with Donald Trump or with other fake news that has been perpetuated in the media. Trying to preventatively inoculate people to be more sceptical and be more resistant to fake news,\u201d says van der Linden.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it might be helpful,\u201d he adds of Facebook\u2019s current trial strategy\u00a0of\u00a0badging\u00a0problem content with warnings. \u201cSimply because\u2026 one of the things that I\u2019m interested in is what I call the psychology of consensus \u2014 which is this idea of when lots of people agree on something implicitly, like when it\u2019s been shared a million times, or this video has a million hits people are inclined to just click on it out of curiosity because there\u2019s some social consensus that this must be important.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd people aren\u2019t really necessarily thinking about it \u2014 and so, again, putting that warning label on there might switch people from this system one\/mode one thinking to being a bit more selective and conscious and deliberate. And of course there\u2019s no guarantee \u2014 but I think it could be helpful for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Might the effect of labeling contentious topics with warnings not wear off over time \u2014 i.e. if people become so desensitized to seeing warnings they start to discount them? While he concedes that\u00a0could become \u201ca factor\u201d, emphasizing that\u00a0the\u00a0long term solution is clearly better education to foster more critical thinking,\u00a0he argues there\u2019s an interim need to help the public\u00a0debunk myths being dressed up as facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course education is probably the ultimate vaccine in the long term, if you educate children and then adults to be sceptical consumers\u2026 But in the interim I think it would be important to try to develop tools that could help with that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In terms of study specifics, the researchers conducted\u00a0two surveys: the first, polling a representative sample (1,000 people) of the US population, aiming to\u00a0identify the most compelling falsehood associated with global warming \u2014 which they identify as\u00a0a fake claim on the Oregon Global Warming Petition Project website that there\u2019s no scientific consensus on human-caused climate change \u2014 and which they subsequently used as the misinformation statement for their\u00a0second study: an online randomized survey (polling 2,167 people), conducted via Amazon Mechanical Turk, to assess different combinations of statements of truth and statements of misinformation in order to assess\u00a0how public opinion on climate science consensus varied as a result.<\/p>\n

Interestingly they found their warnings to be equally effective across US political lines \u2014 despite also finding that Republican voters were\u00a0more likely to believe climate misinformation vs facts than Democratic counterparts.<\/p>\n

What surprised the researchers most about the results of the study? Firstly how powerful misinformation can be, says van der Linden, but\u00a0also \u2014 on the positive side \u2014 that \u2018inoculating\u2019 people against misinformation can be effective even if a person has\u00a0an entrenched prior viewpoint.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t anticipate that the misinformation would be so overwhelming for people,\u201d he says. \u201cI would have anticipated that the misinformation would have some influence \u2014 but not that it would cancel out the facts completely. I think that was quite surprising and also quite concerning, in some way, that people are paying so much attention to this idea of balance. And it\u2019s tricky for people because they don\u2019t know what the sources are, and how credible each side of the debate is \u2014 so it is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSimilarly we weren\u2019t sure if inoculating people, depending on their prior position, is going to be effective because some people might already have certain prior beliefs \u2014 and we were surprised by the fact that on average the inoculation worked well, regardless of what your affiliation or your prior beliefs were. This is not to say there aren\u2019t individuals in the study for whom it didn\u2019t work \u2014 and similarly vaccines work for most people but they can\u2019t guarantee they work for everyone \u2014 so I would say that\u2019s very much the same here too. But we were surprised that it worked across the board \u2014 and that is quite promising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about\u00a0the global challenge posted by the propagation of misinformation,\u00a0van der Linden is also\u00a0relatively upbeat \u2014 pointing out that misinformation is nothing new, even though\u00a0the popularity of social\u00a0media platforms has led to an amping up of the fake news volume in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re perhaps now at the peak of fake news\u2026 Perhaps it\u2019s viral right now but I think it will subside in years to come \u2014 at least that\u2019s my hope \u2014 but that\u2019s not to downplay the importance of doing something about it\u2026 It is affecting people\u2019s opinions and the types of decisions they make \u2014 both for themselves, as well as for other people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we think about Donald Trump, about Brexit, about situations where people \u2014 regardless of what the right or wrong position here is \u2014 it is influencing the way in which people make decisions and it could potentially undermine the democratic process, and I think that at least that\u2019s important to take into account.\u201d<\/p>\n

He agrees powerful social media platforms such as Facebook should be pro-actively trying to mitigate\u00a0the spread of misinformation across their networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the influence and power that Zuckerberg\u2019s platform has I do think Facebook has a responsibility to try to moderate what\u2019s going on on their website,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/J_xaDbfqr0o\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research conducted by social psychologists at Cambridge University in the UK, and Yale and George Mason in the US, offers\u00a0a potential\u00a0strategy\u00a0for mitigating the\u00a0spread of misinformation\u00a0online \u2014\u00a0involving the use of pro-active <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-3024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t