The challenge
Worry that corrections fail or backfire, and that evidence on fact-checking came almost only from the US.
The case
In September and October 2020, political scientists Ethan Porter and Thomas Wood worked with fact-checking organisations in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa and the United Kingdom to test real fact-checks on topics including COVID-19, local politics, crime and the economy. Across 28 experiments covering 22 fact-checks, people were randomly shown misinformation, misinformation plus a fact-check, or neither. A pooled analysis published in PNAS in 2021 found fact-checks cut belief in false claims by at least 0.59 points on a 5-point scale, while exposure to the misinformation itself raised false belief by less than 0.07 points. Most effects were still detectable more than two weeks later, with little difference between countries and no sign of backfire.
Why it worked
Clear corrections reliably move beliefs across very different countries, so funding fact-checkers is sound; the hard part is getting corrections in front of the people who saw the false claim.
Sources
- Porter, E. & Wood, T. J. (2021). The global effectiveness of fact-checking. PNAS, 118(37), e2104235118.
- Ohio State University News (2021). Fact-checking works across the globe to correct misinformation.
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