Scientists discuss how to detect, resist and counter fake news

How to detect, resist and counter the flood of fake news Misinformation about health is drowning out the facts and putting us at risk. Researchers are learning why bad information spreads and how to protect yourself. lily Science News

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Awash in bad information, people have swallowed hydroxychloroquine hoping the drug will protect them against COVID-19 — even with no evidence that it helps (SN Online: 8/2/20). Others refuse to wear masks, contrary to the best public health advice available. In January, protestors disrupted a mass vaccination site in Los Angeles, blocking life-saving shots for hundreds of people. “COVID has opened everyone’s eyes to the dangers of health misinformation,” says cognitive scientist Briony Swire-Thompson of Northeastern University in Boston.

The pandemic has made clear that bad information can kill. And scientists are struggling to stem the tide of misinformation that threatens to drown society. The sheer volume of fake news, flooding across social media with little fact-checking to dam it, is taking an enormous toll on trust in basic institutions. In a December poll of 1,115 U.S. adults, by NPR and the research firm Ipsos, 83 percent said they were concerned about the spread of false information. Yet fewer than half were able to identify as false a QAnon conspiracy theory about pedophilic Satan worshippers trying to control politics and the media.

Scientists have been learning more about why and how people fall for bad information — and what we can do about it. Certain characteristics of social media posts help misinformation spread, new findings show. Other research suggests bad claims can be counteracted by giving accurate information to consumers at just the right time, or by subtly but effectively nudging people to pay attention to the accuracy of what they’re looking at. Such techniques involve small behavior changes that could add up to a significant bulwark against the onslaught of fake news.

Some people unwittingly share misinformation on social media and elsewhere simply because they find it surprising or interesting. Another factor is the method through which the misinformation is presented — whether through text, audio or video. Of these, video can be seen as the most credible, according to research by S. Shyam Sundar, an expert on the psychology of messaging at Penn State. He and colleagues decided to study this after a series of murders in India started in 2017 as people circulated via WhatsApp a video purported to be of child abduction. (It was, in reality, a distorted clip of a public awareness campaign video from Pakistan.) ...

One of the most insidious problems with fake news is how easily it lodges itself in our brains and how hard it is to dislodge once it’s there. We’re constantly deluged with information, and our minds use cognitive shortcuts to figure out what to retain and what to let go, says Sara Yeo, a science-communication expert at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “Sometimes that information is aligned with the values that we hold, which makes us more likely to accept it,” she says. That means people continually accept information that aligns with what they already believe, further insulating them in self-reinforcing bubbles.

Compounding the problem is that people can process the facts of a message properly while misunderstanding its gist because of the influence of their emotions and values, psychologist Valerie Reyna of Cornell University wrote in 2020 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Thanks to new insights like these, psychologists and cognitive scientists are developing tools people can use to battle misinformation before it arrives — or that prompts them to think more deeply about the information they are consuming. ...