The quality and reliability of information people are exposed to is a major social determinant of health, like income or education. Improving information environments is essential to combat misinformation, reduce health inequities, and improve health outcomes.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
How We Can All Respond to Misinformation academic.oup.com/book/60489 by @leticiabode.bsky.social @ekvraga.bsky.social
Needed: "...correcting publicly to build social norms around responding to misinformation."
Platforms must "promote corrections & take action against toxic behaviors."
βOverall, we found that the early studies on this topic have often produced inconclusive findings regarding the existence of uniquely persuasive or convincing effects of deepfake exposure.β journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
βBypassingβ is a promising strategy for countering misinformation by sharing truthful, positively framed statements instead of direct corrections. New research shows it can correct misperceptions effectively, especially when people are still open to learning.
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/misg...
Unfortunately, the NSF grant that supports our work has been terminated. This is a setback, but our mission has not changed. We will continue to work hard on making cognitive science a more inclusive field. Stay tuned for upcoming events.
This statement from the NSF is insane.
Science is, in essence, designed to separate the true from the false.
Understanding how falsehoods spread is key to the scientific endeavor. It is not a violation of free speech to be proven wrong.
In this new Registered Report, GligoriΔ et al. identify partisan differences in trust in scientists in the U.S. and find that several interventions fail to increase trust among conservatives.
https://www.nature.c...
#trustinscientists #scientists #ideology #trust
A close up photo of people scrolling on their smartphones.
πNew #PSPB research reveals cognitive reflection and open-minded thinking protect against misinformation, while conspiracy mentality increases susceptibility. Truth sensitivity matters more than bias in determining who falls for false information.
π: ow.ly/580Q50VA86S
New study finds that most people say others should put in high effort to respond to misinformation on social media, but they usually donβt follow through themselves. People are more likely to act when the person posting the misinformation is a close contact.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Kaufmann: DOGE claims to have found Social Security loans going to 11 year olds and under. It's a survivor benefit annuity to young children whose parents have passed. That's the problem billionaires without a clue doing a job they don't understand
βBoth partisans and strong partisans who were presented with incoherence-inducing news stories containing misinformation exerted more metacognitive effort, more correctly reported that the news stories were inaccurate, and agreed less with those news stories.β www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
βOur studies demonstrate that both partisans, generally, and strong partisans, specifically, presented with coherence-inducing news stories containing misinformation exerted less metacognitive effort, tended to overestimate the accuracy of the news stories, and agreed more with those news stories.β
New research shows that memory strength, not just motivation, is the key to long-term misinformation resistance, with text- and video-based interventions proving more durable than game-based approaches.
matthewfacciani.substack.com/p/fighting-m... #MisinfoResearch
βReflection reduced Democratsβ willingness to spread fake news, yet it did not affect Republicans.β link.springer.com/article/10.1...
βThis is an assault, not on just one little group of researchers, this is saying certain kinds of knowledge is not to be supported by the government.β
The Trump administration is actively breaking the law.
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/06/m...
Representation without taxation for a handful of billionaires, taxation without representation for the rest of us.
π¨New WPπ¨
Remember Musk+Zuck+Trump+Jordan etc crying fact-checker bias b/c Reps were flagged more than Dems? We analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and guess what: posts flagged as "misleading" are 67% more likely to be written by Reps! The issue is Reps, not fact-checkers...
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Does fact-checking work? What the science says www.nature.com/articles/d41...
@profsanderlinden.bsky.social: "Studies provide very consistent evidence that fact-checking does at least partially reduce misperceptions about false claims.β
Yes, complex. Need to learn more. But need all tools!
New summer institute for up-and-coming scholars across disciplines whose work investigates or intersects with disinformation: disinfoinstitute.org
The first iteration will be this June in San Diego. Applications are due January 31.
A new study reveals that the βillusion of objectivityβ is a major factor in believing political misinformation. Partisans who viewed their own political side as unbiased and objective were, ironically, the most biased and least objective when assessing fake news.
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
New study finds that Brazilian participants are more likely to endorse a conspiracy theory when a political leader from their political group supports it.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #MisinfoResearch
Cover of the report - it's in a blue/purple color scheme and shows an abstract illustration of a molecule and the title of the report "Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science Consensus Study Report"
Out now - National Academies consensus report on Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science π§ͺ
It was a privilege to serve as one of the 15 committee members from a wide range of scientific disciplines who put this report together. Quick π§΅1/
www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/und...
Ifβlike meβyou always wanted to hear @profsanderlinden.bsky.social and @hugoreasoning.bsky.social discuss *with each other* whether there *is* a misinformation crisis, the wait is overβhear them do just that an find out who persuaded whom (or not) in this @undark.org podcast: https://buff.ly/41A70KC
Truth or Dare? π²
Dare to check something is the truth before you share it. Make it a habit!
π¨New WPπ¨
We examine news sharing on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Older adults' engagement with unreliable news stems from entrenched partisan bias rather than digital illiteracy or cognitive decline, according to new research. #DigitalLiteracy #FakeNews #MediaLiteracy #OlderAdults #PartisanBias
go.bsky.app/FFCjgks
Scientists, academics, researchers: Weβre excited to share that @altmetric.com is now tracking mentions of your research on Bluesky! π§ͺ
We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation. Outrage is highly engaging and need not be accurate to achieve its communicative goals, making it an attractive signal to embed in misinformation. In eight studies that used US data from Facebook (1,063,298 links) and Twitter (44,529 tweets, 24,007 users) and two behavioral experiments (1475 participants), we show that (i) misinformation sources evoke more outrage than do trustworthy sources; (ii) outrage facilitates the sharing of misinformation at least as strongly as sharing of trustworthy news; and (iii) users are more willing to share outrage-evoking misinformation without reading it first. Consequently, outrage-evoking misinformation may be difficult to mitigate with interventions that assume users want to share accurate information.
Now out in @science.org: misinformation exploits outrage to spread online. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Doing this work was way harder than it had to be, thanks to Big Tech. I want to highlight our lead analyst @killianmcloughlin.bsky.social for his heroic perseverance to bring you this paper π§΅
