Journalistic fact checks are a more effective counter to COVID-19 misinformation than the false news tags commonly used by social media outlets, according to new Cornell research.
“We find that more information may be an antidote to misinformation,” conclude political scientists Sarah Kreps and Douglas Kriner.
Kreps and Kriner are co-authors of “The COVID-I9 Infodemic and the Efficacy of Interventions Intended to Reduce Misinformation,” published Feb. 16 in Public Opinion Quarterly. Kreps is the John L. Wetherill Professor and interim chair of government and director of the Cornell Tech Policy Lab in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Kriner is the Clinton Rossiter Professor in American Institutions in the Department of Government (A&S) and faculty director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs; both are faculty in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.
The researchers say the pandemic has given rise to a proliferation of misinformation that threatens public health by drowning out factual content and prompting individuals to take measures that are ineffective at best and harmful at worst.
Media outlets have countered the flow of bogus claims with two tools:
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