How Social Media Rewards Misinformation

Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased

Why do people share misinformation on social media? In this research ( N = 2,476), we show that the structure of online sharing built into social platforms is more important than individual deficits in critical reasoning and partisan bias—commonly cited drivers of misinformation. Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that attracts others' attention. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering response outcomes such as spreading misinformation. As a result of user habits, 30 to 40% of the false news shared in our research was due to the 15% most habitual news sharers. Suggesting that sharing of false news is part of a broader response pattern established by social media platforms, habitual users also shared information that challenged their own political beliefs. Finally, we show that sharing of false news is not an inevitable consequence of user habits: Social media sites could be restructured to build habits to share accurate information.

Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased

Why do people share misinformation on social media? In this research ( N = 2,476), we show that the structure of online sharing built into social platforms is more important than individual deficits in critical reasoning and partisan bias—commonly cited drivers of misinformation. Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that attracts others' attention. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering response outcomes such as spreading misinformation. As a result of user habits, 30 to 40% of the false news shared in our research was due to the 15% most habitual news sharers. Suggesting that sharing of false news is part of a broader response pattern established by social media platforms, habitual users also shared information that challenged their own political beliefs. Finally, we show that sharing of false news is not an inevitable consequence of user habits: Social media sites could be restructured to build habits to share accurate information.

Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust

Many worry that news on social media leaves people uninformed or even misinformed. Here we conducted a preregistered two-wave online field experiment in France and Germany (N = 3,395) to estimate the effect of following the news on Instagram and WhatsApp. Participants were asked to follow two accounts for 2 weeks and activate the notifications. In the treatment condition, the accounts were those of news organizations, while in the control condition they covered cooking, cinema or art. The treatment enhanced current affairs knowledge, participants’ ability to discern true from false news stories and awareness of true news stories, as well as trust in the news. The treatment had no significant effects on feelings of being informed, political efficacy, affective polarization and interest in news or politics. These results suggest that, while some forms of social media use are harmful, others are beneficial and can be leveraged to foster a well-informed society.

The social media context interferes with truth discernment

Simply considering whether to share news on social media reduces the extent to which people discriminate truth from falsehood.

Capturing our Attention

What are the harms of misinformation? It’s widely believed that it causes false belief, including false beliefs in quite bizarre claims. I argue that this threat is greatly exaggerated: while plaus...

First Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role in Spreading Fake News

Automated accounts are being programmed to spread fake news, according to the first systematic study of the way online misinformation spreads

Facts and Myths about Misperceptions

Misperceptions threaten to warp mass opinion and public policy on controversial issues in politics, science, and health. What explains the prevalence and persistence of these false and unsupported beliefs, which seem to be genuinely held by many people? Though limits on cognitive resources and attention play an important role, many of the most destructive misperceptions arise in domains where individuals have weak incentives to hold accurate beliefs and strong directional motivations to endorse beliefs that are consistent with a group identity such as partisanship. These tendencies are often exploited by elites who frequently create and amplify misperceptions to influence elections and public policy. Though evidence is lacking for claims of a “post-truth” era, changes in the speed with which false information travels and the extent to which it can find receptive audiences require new approaches to counter misinformation. Reducing the propagation and influence of false claims will require further efforts to inoculate people in advance of exposure (for example, media literacy), debunk false claims that are already salient or widespread (for example, fact-checking), reduce the prevalence of low-quality information (for example, changing social media algorithms), and discourage elites from promoting false information (for example, strengthening reputational sanctions).

Fake news spreads like an epidemic. Here’s how to stop it.

Researchers study fake news the same way they study the spread of disease. When misinformation “goes viral”, it is not just a metaphor. It is what’s actually happening. via @straits_times str.sg/viz-misinformation

Post-Social Media

Social media sheds its most unreliable component: other people

The spreading of misinformation online

Significance The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web is a fruitful environment for the massive diffusion of unverified rumors. In this work, using a massive quantitative analysis of Facebook, we show that information related to distinct narratives––conspiracy theories and scientific news––generates homogeneous and polarized communities (i.e., echo chambers) having similar information consumption patterns. Then, we derive a data-driven percolation model of rumor spreading that demonstrates that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades’ size. , The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15––where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of a new civil war in the United States. In this work, we address the determinants governing misinformation spreading through a thorough quantitative analysis. In particular, we focus on how Facebook users consume information related to two distinct narratives: scientific and conspiracy news. We find that, although consumers of scientific and conspiracy stories present similar consumption patterns with respect to content, cascade dynamics differ. Selective exposure to content is the primary driver of content diffusion and generates the formation of homogeneous clusters, i.e., “echo chambers.” Indeed, homogeneity appears to be the primary driver for the diffusion of contents and each echo chamber has its own cascade dynamics. Finally, we introduce a data-driven percolation model mimicking rumor spreading and we show that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades’ size.

The Liar’s Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability?

This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians "crying wolf"' over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the "liar's dividend," may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying of core supporters. We administer five survey experiments to over 15,000 American adults detailing hypothetical politician responses to stories describing real politician scandals. We find that claims of misinformation representing both strategies raise politician support across partisan subgroups. These strategies are effective against text-based reports of scandals, but are largely ineffective against video evidence and do not reduce general trust in media. Finally, these false claims produce greater dividends for politicians than alternative responses to scandal, such as remaining silent or apologizing.

The Role of Media in Political Polarization| Inoculation Can Reduce the Perceived Reliability of Polarizing Social Media Content

Little research is available on psychological interventions that counter susceptibility to polarizing online content. We conducted 3 studies (n1 = 472, n2 = 193, n3 = 772) to evaluate whether psychological resistance against polarizing social media content can be conferred, using the Bad News game, a “technique-based inoculation” intervention that simulates a social media feed. We investigate (1) whether technique-based inoculation can reduce susceptibility to content designed to fuel intergroup polarization; (2) whether technique-based inoculation can offer cross-protection against misinformation techniques that people were not inoculated against; and (3) whether political ideology plays a role in how people engage with anti-misinformation interventions. In Studies 1 and 3 (but not Study 2), we found that technique-based inoculation significantly reduces the perceived reliability of polarizing content and offers partial cross-protection against untreated misinformation techniques. We found no effect for attitudinal certainty and news-sharing intentions. Finally, we report preliminary evidence that people may choose to engage with politically congruent news topics within the intervention.

Beyond Misinformation: Social Media and the Sculpting of Epistemic Agency

ABSTRACT The dominant account of social media's epistemic harms focuses on the spread of misinformation and the production of false beliefs at scale. This paper argues that the misinformation narrative, whatever its merits, has obscured a deeper and more intimate form of epistemic damage. Dominant social media platforms do not merely supply bad inputs to stable epistemic machinery. They reshape the machinery itself. I argue that social media platforms are powerful engines for sculpting epistemic agency via two mechanisms: normative learning, through which users internalize descriptive and injunctive norms about how to interact with evidence, and reinforcement learning, through which habitual patterns of epistemic response are developed. In these ways, platforms can reshape users' epistemic styles, including their testimonial policies, evidential thresholds for belief revision, and theoretical values governing how they select explanations. This should trouble us, as the constraints driving which styles are produced are systematically orthogonal to truth and ignore information about the environments agents inhabit. This discussion identifies a neglected form of epistemic hostility: not the exploitation of existing cognitive vulnerabilities to implant false beliefs, but the production of new vulnerabilities that can then be exploited. From this, more and better evidence cannot save us.

Social Media Algorithms Distort Social Instincts and Fuel Misinformation - Neuroscience News

Social media algorithms, designed to boost user engagement for advertising revenue, amplify the biases inherent in human social learning processes, leading to misinformation and polarization.