Laypersons can reliably discern fake news from true news using verifiable criteria
the verdict
CONTESTED
contested - evenly split
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
2 sources for · 1 against
Retrieved studies offer conflicting findings on human capability to evaluate news credibility, with some research indicating that laypeople can distinguish information sources while other literature notes limitations or susceptibility to misinformation and political biases.
Significance Many people consume news via social media. It is therefore desirable to reduce social media users’ exposure to low-quality news content. One possible intervention is for social media ranking algorithms to show relatively less content from sources that users deem to be untrustworthy. But are laypeople’s judgments reliable indicators of quality, or are they corrupted by either partisan bias or lack of information? Perhaps surprisingly, we find that laypeople—on average—are quite good at distinguishing between lower- and higher-quality sources. These results indicate that incorporating the trust ratings of laypeople into social media ranking algorithms may prove an effective intervention against misinformation, fake news, and news content with heavy political bias. Reducing the spread of misinformation, especially on social media, is a major challenge. We investigate one potential approach: having social media platform algorithms preferentially display content from news sources that users rate as trustworthy. To do so, we ask whether crowdsourced trust ratings can effectively differentiate more versus less reliable sources. We ran two preregistered experiments (n = 1,010 from Mechanical Turk and n = 970 from Lucid) where individuals rated familiarity with, and trust in, 60 news sources from three categories: (i) mainstream media outlets, (ii) hyperpartisan websites, and (iii) websites that produce blatantly false content (“fake news”). Despite substantial partisan differences, we find that laypeople across the political spectrum rated mainstream sources as far more trustworthy than either hyperpartisan or fake news sources. Although this difference was larger for Democrats than Republicans—mostly due to distrust of mainstream sources by Republicans—every mainstream source (with one exception) was rated as more trustworthy than every hyperpartisan or fake news source across both studies when equally weighting ratings of Democrats and Republicans. Furthermore, politically balanced layperson ratings were strongly correlated (r = 0.90) with ratings provided by professional fact-checkers. We also found that, particularly among liberals, individuals higher in cognitive reflection were better able to discern between low- and high-quality sources. Finally, we found that excluding ratings from participants who were not familiar with a given news source dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the crowd. Our findings indicate that having algorithms up-rank content from trusted media outlets may be a promising approach for fighting the spread of misinformation on social media.
Four years ago, we did not use the words “Fake News” so much, although it has probably existed since humans started exchanging information and has been used ever since. Fake or Fact? This is a crucial distinction to make whenever we act while basing our action on information. Natural sciences have given us the instruments to distinguish facts from errors and when using these instruments experimentally, facts are circumstances that can be verified. Three out of many instruments are a standardized design, a well-fitting control, and statistics. Since humans plainly lack a reliable “feeling of truth”, these instruments are designed to ultimately help us detect facts. The undeniable achievements, not just in medicine, are innumerable and culminate in the popular phrase on t-shirts: “Got Polio? Me Neither. Thanks Science”. It is not negotiable: Facts are not optional, not just a user-defined “construction”; they are facts because they can be tested, and they have no “alternative”. The alternative to a fact is falsehood. Two distinctions need to be made: The term “Fake News” describes in effect a deliberate hoax with the explicit, mostly political aim to spread uncertainty, mimicking reputable news. There is certainly a fundamental difference between fake news and scientific studies of poor quality. To distinguish Fake News from scientific facts is particularly important and in essence the competence of the reader rather than of the originator of a report. Secondly, the term “scientific fact” is not unproblematic since we (the scientists) concede a 5% error margin. This means that at least 5% of all that we publish, regardless how well a study is done, is, in fact, false. This situation is one of the biggest strengths of science: That we all – and always – know that we could be wrong. A good scientist will always accept that whatever we prove or demonstrate only mirrors the current level of errors and omissions. This greatest strength is also a fatal weakness when confronted by fake news: If we, the scientists, do not even know the truth – the truth may be arbitrary and becomes what someone chooses to believe (1). Unfortunately, we cannot simply translate the above-mentioned phrase into “Got Migraine? Me Neither. Thanks Science”. We are coming a long way, but although our knowledge about the pathophysiology and treatment of headache is tremendous compared to what we knew just 50 years ago, we have not truly understood migraine. As of yet. The fact (sic) that we have, with triptans and CGRP antibodies, not one but two highly specific medications specifically designed for migraine is one out of many a triumph for headache science. All this is the result of strict adherence to scientific rules and Cephalalgia, the official journal of the International Headache Society, is not just a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics but also strongly recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (2). Standards for reporting involve, for example, that authors should follow STROBE (observational studies), CONSORT (randomized controlled studies), ARRIVE (animal research), and MOOSE (systematic reviews/Meta-analyses). Cephalalgia also requires that studies on headache and cervical pain adhere to the terminology and criteria within the ICHD (3) and studies on facial pain adhere to the terminology and criteria within ICOP (4). The combination of a standardized method of reporting (5) and an unequivocal classification of what type of headache is investigated (6,7) are the basis on which the headache community ensures that any data reported in – let us assume America – is verifiable; that is, reproducible in Europe and Asia. Other quality issues are a sufficiently high number of participants and adequate statistics. Possibly even more important is transparency – to note how expe
Research on autocracies often posits that propaganda can manipulate citizens' beliefs, but existing work does not systematically investigate how well individuals recognize misinformation in authoritarian environments and whether susceptibility to propaganda is related to vulnerability to false news. I present the results of four surveys in Russia, in which more than 60,000 participants evaluated 74 true and false news headlines. I find that Russians' capacity to discern falsehoods is comparable to discernment found in other political contexts, and they could often detect false news stories. However, consumers of state media gave less accurate evaluations than consumers of independent media, and government supporters were substantially more susceptible to pro-regime misinformation than opposition-minded citizens. Supporters also strongly rejected true messages inconsistent with their political dispositions. These results help us understand why in environments dominated by propaganda individuals can be quite vulnerable to information manipulation. At the same time, regime critics in my study often fell for propaganda-inconsistent falsehoods. These results highlight the broader challenge of fighting misinformation and propaganda in a situation when many citizens exhibit political biases.
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