The battle against fake news is generating an unexpected paradox: the more we try to unmask disinformation, the more the public becomes distrustful of all news, even those based on facts and coming from reliable sources. This is what emerges from a new study (I link it here) which tested the effectiveness of three strategies commonly used for debunking and countering fake news. Fact-checking? Media literacy initiatives? Dedicated reports? All under the lens, compared with three alternative approaches.
The results are alarming. All debunking strategies, both traditional and revisited, seem to fuel a widespread sense of doubt among the public. And they put at risk trust in legitimate sources of information, an essential pillar of functioning democracies (if they have them).
A large-scale study across three continents
The research, published in Nature Human Behavior, involved a sample of 6.127 participants in the United States, Poland and Hong Kong. The researchers conducted three online survey experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of three remediation strategies currently used to combat misinformation, compared to three alternative strategies.
The idea behind the redesigned strategies was to promote critical, but not overly skeptical, user engagement with the information. For example, instead of focusing on the true/false dichotomy, one of the alternative approaches emphasized understanding political bias in news reporting.
Debunking fuels mistrust
There's a lot to think about. Public discourse about fake news not only increases skepticism toward false information, but also erodes trust in trustworthy news sources.
It's a losing game: the potential gains from reducing misperceptions must be carefully weighed against the broader implications of increased skepticism. And this is excluding fake debunking, a propaganda technique disguised as fact-checking, which only aims to dismantle unwelcome theses by branding them as false.
Apparently, a deeper review of current approaches to disinformation and the need to develop more nuanced strategies.
The challenge of a critical but not cynical reading
The challenge, therefore, is to find a balance: promoting a critical look at information without lapsing into an excess of corrosive cynicism, which undermines trust in reliable sources. No easy task in an era where fake news has become a constant topic of discussion, fueling growing concerns about its potential harm.
High profile events such as the storming of the US Capitol, vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the brutal terrorist attack by Hamas on 7 October and Israel's abominable reaction have contributed to increasing these fears. They did it because they showed all the limits of the current media, never perceived as truly independent. This misperception has transferred over time to the now-on-the-rise fact-checking initiatives, with major platforms incorporating fact-checking into their regular offering, sometimes without applying the same rigor to their own news.
Towards a more nuanced approach to debunking
The feeling is that the era of "assault" debunking is over, the "Ferragni" phase of the great debunkers who were a bit of a scourge and a bit of an influencer. At the David Puente, in order to understand each other. While on the one hand their efforts to combat the spread of fake news are commendable (if and when in good faith), on the other hand they have fueled a climate of generalized distrust towards information. A paradox that requires a profound rethinking of current strategies.
As the researchers suggest, the path to follow is that of a more nuanced approach, which promotes the ability to discern the facts without applying easy "stamps" based on hasty analysis or mockery. A complex but crucial challenge, because the very health of our public debate depends on it.
