Truth be told

How “true” and “false” labels influence user engagement with fact-checks

Bibliographic Data

ID6443509
AuthorsNatalia Aruguete (0000-0002-1571-9224, National University of Quilmes), Ingrid Bachmann (0000-0002-2805-5148, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile; Millennium Nucleus on Digital Inequalities and Opportunities (NUDOS), Chile), E Calvo (0000-0001-5770-1391, University of Maryland, USA), Sebastián Valenzuela (0000-0001-5991-7364, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile; Millennium Nucleus on Digital Inequalities and Opportunities (NUDOS), Chile; Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD), Chile, corresponding author), Tiago Ventura (0000-0003-2162-814X, Georgetown University)
Year2023
Volume27
Issue3
Pages1443-1464
Publication date2023-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448231193709
OpenAlexW4386372648
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited40

When do users share fact-checks on social media? We describe a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 election in Argentina measuring the propensity of voters to share corrections to political misinformation that randomly confirm or challenge their initial beliefs. We find evidence of selective sharing—the notion that individuals prefer to share pro-attitudinal rather than counter-attitudinal fact-checks. This effect, however, is conditioned by the type of adjudication made by fact-checkers. More specifically, in line with motivated reasoning processes, respondents report a higher intent to share confirmations (i.e. messages fact-checked with a “true” rating) compared with refutations (i.e. messages fact-checked with a “false” rating). Experimental results are partially confirmed with a regression discontinuity analysis of observational data of Twitter and replicated with additional experiments. Our findings suggest that fact-checkers could increase exposure to their verifications on social media by framing their corrections as confirmations of factually correct information

Adjudication · Computer security · Framing (construction · Framing effect · Misinformation · Persuasion · Political science · Regression discontinuity design · Social media · Statistics · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Mathematics · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology

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