Abstract
A number of solutions have been proposed to address concerns about misinformation online, including encouraging experts to engage in corrections of misinformation being shared and improving media literacy among the American public. This study combines these approaches to examine whether news literacy (NL) messages on social media enhance the effectiveness of expert correction of misinformation on Twitter. Two experiments suggest that expert organizations can successfully correct misinformation on social media across two controversial issues with a single tweet. However, three different NL messages did not improve the effectiveness of expert corrections. We discuss the difficulties of crafting NL messages that break through the clutter on social media and suggest guidelines for organizations attempting to address misinformation online.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 245-267 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Communication Research |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Partial funding for this project was provided by Georgetown University.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
Keywords
- correction
- health communication
- misinformation
- news literacy
- social media