To neutralize misinformation , fact - agree works . This is grant to a new study that count at how efficient the employment of fact - checking is in weaken fake news show . Interestingly , fact - checking is very effective at reducing false beliefs with no proffer it backfires , have mass more entrenched in their beliefs .
The study , published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , conducted fact - hold experiments at the same time in four countries : Argentina , Nigeria , South Africa , and the United Kingdom , and found that fact - checking worked to reduce delusive beliefs in all four , and the core can last for up to two week . former study have shown that the glide path is effective in unmarried land , but there was no data on a more global approach , until now .
The team collaborated with theInternational Fact - Checking connection – an organization that promotes nonpartisan and transparent fact - checking – working with specific fact - watch organizations in each country .
Around 2,000 participants in each country were interviewed between September and October 2020 on local politics , crime , and the economy , plus questions related to clime change and the young coronavirus . Each individual was given five statements alone to each country plus the two global ones .
They were separate into three groups . The first only bewilder the misinformation . The 2nd group got the misinformation and then the fact - checks , and the third did n’t receive either misinformation or corrective statements . Each participant then had to place between 1 and 5 how much they believed the statements to be dependable . Fact - checking increased the factual truth by 0.59 distributor point on that scale , but misinformation only decreased truth by 0.07 points .
" Misinformation is far less persuasive than disciplinary info , by and large , " Thomas Wood , supporter professor of political science at the Ohio State University and co - author of the study , said in astatement .
The investigator found that after two workweek , accuracy stayed gamey in those that had received fact - check information . Not amazingly , the more people are exposed to certain issues the better they are at deal with misinformation . Falsehoods about climate modification had small effect on masses ’s accuracy on the result , but untruth about COVID-19 had the largest misinformation force in the study . That say fact - checking helped boost the accuracy even on this issue .
It ’s also important to know that people do n’t appear ( in cosmopolitan ) to cut into their heels in when exposed to fact - checking , the author notice . Fact - checking is not hold the misinformation problem worse .
" When we started doing misinformation work about five year ago , it was the consensus that right misinformation was n’t just ineffectual , but that it was exasperate the problem and making mass more entrenched in their simulated beliefs , " woodwind state . " We found no evidence of that in these four rural area . What we did get hold was that fact - checking can be a very in effect tool against misinformation . "
