Impact of Social Reference Cues on Misinformation Sharing on Social Media: Series of Experimental Studies.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Health-related misinformation on social media is a key challenge to effective and timely public health responses. Existing mitigation measures include flagging misinformation or providing links to correct information, but they have not yet targeted social processes. Current approaches focus on increasing scrutiny, providing corrections to misinformation (debunking), or alerting users prospectively about future misinformation (prebunking and inoculation). Here, we provide a test of a complementary strategy that focuses on the social processes inherent in social media use, in particular, social reinforcement, social identity, and injunctive norms.

Objective

This study aimed to examine whether providing balanced social reference cues (ie, cues that provide informatio

SUBMITTER: Jones CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10485706 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature