Truth decayFact-Checking Works Across the Globe
Researchers found that fact-checking, aiming to reduce false beliefs, worked with little variation in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa and the U.K., and the positive effects were still detectable two weeks later.
Fact-checking works to reduce false beliefs across the globe, according to a new study conducted in four countries.
Researchers found that fact-checking worked with little variation in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa and the U.K., and the positive effects were still detectable two weeks later.
Even more encouraging, there was no evidence of a “backfire” effect of fact-checking, said Thomas Wood, co-author of the study and assistant professor of political science at The Ohio State University.
“When we started doing misinformation work about five years ago, it was the consensus that correcting misinformation wasn’t just ineffective, but that it was aggravating the problem and making people more entrenched in their false beliefs,” Wood said.
“We found no evidence of that in these four countries. What we did find was that fact-checking can be a very effective tool against misinformation.”
Wood conducted the study with Ethan Porter, assistant professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. The research was published Sept. 6, 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers worked with fact-checking organizations in the four countries that are part of the International Fact-Checking Network, an organization that promotes nonpartisan and transparent fact-checking. They evaluated five fact-checks that were unique to each country and two – regarding COVID-19 and climate change – that were tested in all four countries.
The fact-checks in each country, done in September and October 2020, covered a broad range of misinformation, including local politics, crime and the economy.
Some of the 2,000 participants in each country received only the misinformation, while others received the misinformation followed by the actual corrections used by local fact-checking organizations in response to misinformation.
They then rated how much they believed the false statement on a scale of 1-5.
In each country, members of a control group did not receive any misinformation or corrective statements, but simply rated how much they believed the statements.
When compared to misinformation, every fact-check produced more accurate beliefs, while misinformation didn’t always lead to less accurate beliefs when compared to the controls.
Results showed that fact-checks increased factual accuracy by .59 points on the five-point scale. Misinformation decreased factual accuracy by less than .07 on the same scale.
