We Need To Talk: Correcting Misinformation Through Political Discussions

Political misinformation has become a growing concern among media pundits and the academic community alike. While scholars from various disciplines have started exploring the origins and consequences of misinformation, many questions remain unanswered. For instance, prior research on corrective interventions mostly focuses on their underlying content (e.g., how to design fact-checks) or attributes of the recipients (e.g., who is open to attitude change). Much less is known, however, about how such corrections can ultimately reach those who need them most. After all, the effectiveness of fact-checks in the news is undermined by the fact that (1) people tend to select media sources that are consistent with their predispositions and can therefore avoid corrective information altogether (Stroud, 2008), and (2) even if they are exposed to such corrections in the news, they tend to have little impact on people’s underlying attitudes (Nyhan et al., 2019). In this project, we argue that the most promising channel through which misinformation can be corrected is interpersonal communication, since many people receive political information primarily from conversations with their peers (Druckman, Levendusky, and McLain, 2018) and selection bias in social ties tends to be less pronounced (Lazer et al., 2010). Through a combination of surveys and laboratory experiments, we therefore explore the role of interpersonal communication in correcting misperceptions. This project is funded by the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (Discovery and Innovation Grant).

SEE THE STUDY
LOCATION

United States

RESEARCH QUESTION

How do different types of political conversations impact the spread (and potential correction) of people’s misperceptions related to climate change and COVID-19?

RESEARCH DESIGN

A combination of natural, laboratory, and survey experiments involving political discussions

FINDINGS

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