Seeing Is Believing: Is Video Modality More Powerful in Spreading Fake News via Online Messaging Apps?

Abstract

False rumors on WhatsApp, the world’s largest messaging app, have led to mob lynching in India and other countries. Doctored videos sent over the platform have elicited visceral responses among users, resulting in the wrongful death of innocent people. Would the responses have been so strong if the false news were circulated in text or audio? Is video modality the reason for such powerful effects? We explored this question by comparing reactions to three false stories prepared in either text-only, audio-only, or video formats, among rural and urban users in India. Our findings reveal that video is processed more superficially, and therefore users believe in it more readily and share it with others. Aside from advancing our theoretical understanding of modality effects in the context of mobile media, our findings also hold practical implications for design of modality-based flagging of fake news, and literacy campaigns to inoculate users against misinformation.

The (minimal) persuasive advantage of political video over text

“…Within the political realm, the relative persuasive advantage of video versus text likewise remains an open question (17)(18)(19). Although some scholars argue that video's audiovisual components can improve the recall of political information (20,21) and facilitate persuasion (22)(23)(24)(25), others suggest that textual information may more effectively mobilize political action (26). Furthermore, whereas past research suggests that persuasive writing (e.g., print news, op-eds) can cause sizable and lasting changes in policy attitudes (27)(28)(29), video-based persuasionparticularly in the form of political advertising-seems to have, at most, small and short-lived effects on candidate evaluations and voting intentions (30-32, although see ref.…”

Combating Fake News: Stakeholder Interventions and Potential Solutions

“…• Medium: The third defining characteristic of fake news is the medium; word of mouth, text, images and multimedia content. Its circulation in the form of audiovideo is the most difficult to detect and are more prone to be perceived as real [56]. Numerous videos shot in different countries have been propagated as accounts of local events to ferment violence exist.…”

Human Detection of Political Deepfakes across Transcripts, Audio, and Video

“…21 ). Moreover, visual misinformation is common on social media 22 and the emotional and motivational influences of visual communication have been attributed to why fake, viral videos have provoked mob-violence 23,24 . While people are more likely to believe a real event occurred after watching a video of the event than reading a description of the event 25 , an open question remains: Does visual communication relative to text increase the believability of fabricated events?…”

“…The realism heuristic 24,26 predicts "people are more likely to trust audiovisual modality [relative to text] because its content has a higher resemblance to the real world." This prediction is relevant for many deepfake videos 27 and suggests fabricated video would be more believable than fabricated text conditional on the absence of obvious perceptual distortions.…”

“…Yet there exists little direct empirical evidence for this heuristic applied to algorithmically manipulated video. In an experiment using three fake videos as stimuli, researchers found that stories presented as videos are perceived as more credible than stories presented as text or read aloud in audio form 24 . In contrast, in an experiment showing 6 political deepfake videos (videos manipulated by artificial intelligence to make someone say something they did not say) and 9 non-manipulated videos, researchers did not find differences between truth discernment rates in video, audio, and text 28 .…”