The study recruited 5,379 Twitter users who had previously retweeted links from Breitbart or Infowars. Experiment-controlled accounts sent users direct messages asking them to rate the accuracy of a nonpolitical headline. Users were randomly assigned a day to receive the message; within each 24-hour window, researchers compared links shared by messaged users with links shared by users who had not yet been messaged.

University of California, Berkeley

Google

This study looks at how willing social media users are to share misinformation or unbelievable content, finding that users are often able to distinguish what is true and untrue, but often fail to first consider this before sharing. Because of this, they find nudging to be a good strategy for pushing users to consider whether information is true or false before sharing. 

Understanding and Reducing the Spread of
Misinformation Online

Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. (2020). Understanding and reducing the spread of misinformation online. ACR North American Advances.

Understanding and Reducing the Spread of Misinformation Online

- intervention led to a 1.9% increase (p=.009) in the average quality of new sites shared
- the way social media is set up gives little chances for users to even consider if something is true or false
- something that might help is to periodically have users rate the accuracy of an article/headline

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