Misinformation and Its Impacts · Lab experiment

Can a quick lesson help you spot fake posts online?

Paper: Psychological inoculation protects against the social media infodemic
McPhedran et al. · Scientific Reports 2023 · doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32962-1

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Can a quick lesson help you spot fake posts online? Researchers in the UK showed about 2,430 adults a mock social feed with real false posts. Some first got a short checklist on spotting fake posts, and others saw warning labels or nothing. Checklist users liked false posts at half the rate of those who got nothing. Warning labels cut liking by about a quarter in the same test. But the checklist also reduced reactions to true posts, and the feed was only a simulation.

AI-assisted summary with an AI voice, not reviewed by the authors. Made from the paper under its CC BY licence. Read the paper before relying on a finding. Keywords: What does social media do to us?, social media, psychological inoculation, misinformation, infodemic, social media.