Dataset Information

Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample.

ABSTRACT: In the 'post-truth era', political fact-checking has become an issue of considerable significance. A recent study in the context of the 2016 US election found that fact-checks of statements by Donald Trump changed participants' beliefs about those statements-regardless of whether participants supported Trump-but not their feelings towards Trump or voting intentions. However, the study balanced corrections of inaccurate statements with an equal number of affirmations of accurate statements. Therefore, the null effect of fact-checks on participants' voting intentions and feelings may have arisen because of this artificially created balance. Moreover, Trump's statements were not contrasted with statements from an opposing politician, and Trump's perceived veracity was not measured. The present study (N = 370) examined the issue further, manipulating the ratio of corrections to affirmations, and using Australian politicians (and Australian participants) from both sides of the political spectrum. We hypothesized that fact-checks would correct beliefs and that fact-checks would affect voters' support (i.e. voting intentions, feelings and perceptions of veracity), but only when corrections outnumbered affirmations. Both hypotheses were supported, suggesting that a politician's veracity does sometimes matter to voters. The effects of fact-checking were similar on both sides of the political spectrum, suggesting little motivated reasoning in the processing of fact-checks.

SUBMITTER: Aird MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6304148 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample.

Aird Michael J MJ Ecker Ullrich K H UKH Swire Briony B Berinsky Adam J AJ Lewandowsky Stephan S

Royal Society open science 20181219 12

In the 'post-truth era', political fact-checking has become an issue of considerable significance. A recent study in the context of the 2016 US election found that fact-checks of statements by Donald Trump changed participants' beliefs about those statements-regardless of whether participants supported Trump-but not their feelings towards Trump or voting intentions. However, the study balanced corrections of inaccurate statements with an equal number of affirmations of accurate statements. There ...[more]

PMID: 30662715

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Project description:People are obtaining more and more information from social media and other online sources, but the spread of misinformation can lead to social disruption. In particular, social networking services (SNSs) can easily spread information of uncertain authenticity and factuality. Although many studies have proposed methods that addressed how to suppress the spread of misinformation on SNSs, few works have examined the impact on society of diffusing both misinformation and its corrective information. This study models the effects of effort to reduce misinformation and the diffusion of corrective information on social disruption, and it clarifies these effects. With the aim of reducing the impact on social disruption, we show that not only misinformation but also corrective information can cause social disruption, and we clarify how to control the spread of the latter to limit its impact. We analyzed the misinformation about a toilet-paper shortage and its correction as well as the social disruption this event caused in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. First, (1) we analyzed the extent to which misinformation and its corrections spread on SNS, and then (2) we created a model to estimate the impact of misinformation and its corrections on the world. Finally, (3) We used our model to analyze the change in this impact when the diffusion of the misinformation and its corrections changed. Based on our analysis results in (1), the corrective information spread much more widely than the misinformation. From the model developed in (2), the corrective information caused excessive purchasing behavior. The analysis results in (3) show that the amount of corrective information required to minimize the societal impact depends on the amount of misinformation diffusion. Most previous studies concentrated on the impact of corrective information on attitudes toward misinformation. On the other hand, the most significant contribution of this study is that it focuses on the impact of corrective information on society and clarifies the appropriate amount of it.

Dataset Information

Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample.

Publications

Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample.

Similar Datasets

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