BWL XI: Paper accepted in PNAS Nexus
A new research paper has been accepted for publication in PNAS Nexus. Based on a preregistered survey experiment, our work demonstrates that context matters in fact-checking on social media and that community notes might be an effective approach to mitigate trust issues with simple misinformation flags.
Title: Community notes increase trust in fact-checking on social media
Authors: Chiara Drolsbach, Kirill Solovev & Nicolas Pröllochs
Abstract: Community-based fact-checking is a promising approach to fact-check social media content at scale. However, an understanding of whether users trust community fact-checks is missing. Here, we presented n = 1810 Americans with 36 misleading and non-misleading social media posts and assessed their trust in different types of fact-checking interventions. Participants were randomly assigned to treatments where misleading content was either accompanied by simple (i.e., context-free) misinformation flags in different formats (expert flags or community flags), or by textual "community notes" explaining why the fact-checked post was misleading. Across both sides of the political spectrum, community notes were perceived as significantly more trustworthy than simple misinformation flags. Our results further suggest that the higher trustworthiness primarily stemmed from the context provided in community notes (i.e., fact-checking explanations) rather than generally higher trust towards community fact-checkers. Community notes also improved the identification of misleading posts. In sum, our work implies that context matters in fact-checking and that community notes might be an effective approach to mitigate trust issues with simple misinformation flags.
The paper will become available soon (preprint available via OSF)