Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation.

Abstract

The spread of false information on social media is a growing problem, necessitating the development of interventions to reduce its impact. We tested the potential effectiveness of social "truth queries"-user replies that draw attention to truth-as a novel intervention for reducing the impact of false information shared on social media. Participants were shown Tweets containing false information that appeared with user replies containing truth queries (Experiments 1-3), no replies (Experiments 1-3), or user replies unrelated to truth (Experiments 2 and 3) and asked to judge either the truth of the information contained in the Tweet or their likelihood of sharing it. We consistently found that social truth queries reduce belief in and reported intent to share Tweets containing