“The more that a study looked like the real world, the less fact-checking changed participants’ minds.”
Entering the new year, Americans are as divided as ever. It’s common to blame people who are intentionally distributing false information for these divisions. Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa says Facebook’s “[bias] against facts” threatens democracy. Others lament losing the “shared sense of reality” and “common baseline of fact” thought to be a prerequisite for democracy.
Fact-checking, the rigorous independent verification of claims, is often presented as vital for fighting falsehoods. Elena Hernandez, a spokesperson for YouTube, states that “fact-checking is a crucial tool to help viewers make their own informed decisions” and “to address the spread of misinformation.” Ariel Riera, head of Argentina-based fact-checking organization Chequeado, argues that fact checking and “quality information” are key in the fight against “the Covid-19 ‘infodemic.'”
Many people, including TV commentator John Oliver, are demanding that social media platforms better flag and combat the “flood of lies.” And worried Twitter engineers sought to “pre-bunk” viral falsehoods before they arose during the United Nations’ Glasgow climate summit in 2021.
As a social scientist who researches the role of truth in a democracy, I believe this response to Americans’ deepening political divisions is missing something.
Fact-checking may be vital for media literacy, discouraging politicians...
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